This document discusses the future of virtual contact centers and cloud contact center software. It describes how contact centers are moving to the cloud to allow for remote and distributed workforces. It then highlights the story of NexRep, a successful virtual contact center that uses Five9's cloud contact center software. NexRep hired at-home agents globally, deployed services rapidly through the cloud, and achieved high revenue, retention rates, and customer satisfaction through coaching agents and leveraging cloud technology.
Modern Roaming for Notes and Nomad – Cheaper Faster Better Stronger
Cloud Contact Center Software Drives Virtual Success
1. Cloud Contact Center Software
The Future of Virtual Contact Centers
Richard Dumas, Director Product & Solution Marketing, Five9
@RichardDumas, www. richarddumas.com
9. Why Social?
UAL baggage handlers destroyed Dave Carroll’s $3,500 Taylor guitar
Carroll fought UAL for a year trying to get compensation
So Dan turned to
17. Many businesses use a distributed model
New Companies
Automattic
37Signals
Genuitec
GitHub
Kalypso LP
MCF Technology
Solutions
ProofHQ
Treehouse
Copyblogger
YouNeedABudget
StackExchange
MySQL
GrantStreet
SoftwareMill
Mozilla
10up
Art & Logic
AsmallOrange
LullaBot
AppendTo
UniversalMind
Basho
Established Companies
Aetna
Accenture
AT&A
Cigna
Cisco
Deloitte
FedEx
IBM
Intel
McKesson
United Health
19. So why are some so successful while others
can’t seem to make it work?
•
•
•
•
•
The right people
The right motivation
The right incentives
The right process
The right technology
21. About a company with…
• 100% At-Home Agents
• Source the BEST Agents
• Amazing Retention
• Higher Quality
• High Revenue per Call
• High Customer Satisfaction
22. The Men Behind NexRep
Founders: Teddy Liaw, John Stewart, Patrick Mckenna
Not the real John Stewart
23. They had a great idea
• Build a virtual contact center
• Provide inbound & outbound call services
• Hire the best talent without geographic limitations
• Use agents who are already customers of clients
• Control costs by delivering services on-demand
24. Challenges:
• Rapid deployment of services
• Scaling based on client demand
• Flexibility to pay as contracts are signed
• Recruiting, Training, Managing &
Retaining Agents
• Call routing to skilled, remote agents
• Remote supervision
25. But how to succeed with existing technology?
• Upfront hardware/software costs
• Slow deployment
• Long upgrade cycles
• Perpetual licenses
• Maintenance costs
• Can’t scale on-demand
• Pay in advance
• Agents tied to physical contact centers
26. The second great idea!
Use the Cloud:
• Pay as you go
• No capital expense
• No hardware or software $$
• Automatic upgrades
• Deploy in days or weeks
• Scale up or down as needed
• Focus on customer experience
• No hidden fees
• No maintenance
• Agents anywhere
27. NexRep Success
According to CEO Teddy Liaw, “With Five9, we have
literally been doubling our year-over-year
revenue.”
NexRep delivers 30+% more revenue per call
opportunity than competitors
90% retention rate for agents who stay over 1 month
36. NexRep’s Secrets to Success
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Hire qualified, motivated agents
Focus on certification and skills
Coaching & communication is critical
Create clear performance expectations
Design proper incentives
Record 100% of calls
Created a virtual community
Choose a solid technical foundation
37. The Leader in Cloud Contact Center
12 years of cloud contact center experience
500+ employees
1,900+ customers (5 continents)
30,000+ concurrent seats
3bn+ calls per year
Annual Revenue
39. Five9 SoCoCare
Social Engagement for Customer Care
• Filters & prioritizes social posts
• Eliminates non-actionable posts
from agent queues
• Arms agents with tools to
enhance productivity & solve
problems
• Provides advanced social
reporting, analytics & KPI
capabilities
40. How Five9 SoCoCare Works
1. NLP – SPAM Elimination
6. Analytics
2. NLP –
Sentiment, Cluster, Trending
Topic
3. Business Rules
5. Interaction
4. Route to
Agent
41. The Future of Virtual Contact Centers
Empowers You To…
Hire The Best
Boost Retention
Reduce Absenteeism
Cut Costs
Improve Productivity
Improve Quality
Notas del editor
The title of my presentation is “The Future of Virtual Contact Centers”But I’m going to argue today that the future for contact centers is being driven by several profound trends that is changing the very nature of work itself
The way we work and the way contact centers will recruit, employ, motivate and retain agents is being effected by some pretty major trends.They trends (along with Big Data) are what Gartner calls “The Nexus”
I don’t need to spend much time convincing you that mobile is having a profound impact. It is not only impacting the kind of support your customers expect – they now increasingly expect things like In-App mobile careIt is impacting how your employees want or rather EXPECT to work
Average worker commutes 20-30 miles each wayAruba Networks Survey:- Now, the notion of ‘traditional’ working hours is slipping away. Mobile devices allow us to hopon to Wi-Fi connections and work when we’re not at ‘work’, making flexible working the orderof the day. This is not borne out of laziness however; 45% of respondents say they work mostefficiently before 9am or after 6pm. Introducing flexibility in the working day could help increaseproductivity.-Technology is giving us the choice, and the ability, to work outside of customary remits. As aresult, employers need to consider whether their present regulations are becoming outdated.Particularly as 70% of people prefer flexible working than working 9 to 5 with an early finish onFridays.- The demand for flexible working hours is not simply a nice-to-have, it’s now a top priority.Over half of those surveyed said they’d prefer to work from home or remotely two to threedays a week than receive a 10% higher salary. Therefore, flexibility might be an opportunity forcompanies to create cost-savings, as well as improve productivity.Working out of the office is also on the up. Globally 37% expect an increase of remote working– just 4.5% foresee a decrease. By country, those in South Africa are likely to increase theirremote hours by the most, with almost a quarter (23%) expecting an increase in remote workingof over 25%.For younger #GenMobile, this leaning towards remote working is amplified: 49% of the groupforecast an increase in the time they spend working remotely in 2014.
-The shift toward at-home agents and virtual call centers is already taking place-According to the National Association of Call Centers, more than half of the contact centers in the United States today (55 percent) have some percentage of their agent population functioning from a home office. Seventy percent of those currently supporting at-home agents plan on increasing the number in 2013.Sample Five9 customer using at-home agents:NetSuite is the world's leading provider of cloud business management software.• 300 agents in multiple countries—Philippines, Canada, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan—and US states• More than 20,000 inbound/outbound calls per month - Medical Alert (125 agents working from home)
-10 years ago it was all about cost which caused call center ops to go overseas Then the thing called social media happened - before you could only complain on the phone to an agent who could keep it contained but with social media consumers had another outlet, a way to complain publicly and get others on their side to complain about you too!! and you never got the phone call, and a chance to resolve the issue social media has transformed the call center… that's a fact
So If you aren’t doing it, or putting plans in place to offer it – your competitors probably are…
Consumers use of social media is driving a need for Better quality – means sourcing agents with the right skilss..Better toolsNew Agents skills
The cloud and SaaS services is having a profound impact on the way we work and collaborateEasier to build virtual teamsCloud Contact Center SoftwareCloud Collaboration ToolsCloud CRM toolsThe apps, the infrastructure and the data is all stored in the cloud giving workers (in our case agents and supervisors) more flexibility around how and when they work.
More and more companies are turning to the cloudA recent study done by Aberdeen Consulting showed that (other the past 12 months) companies using Cloud CC realized a reduction in complaints 18% while at the same time reducing support costs – while on premise remained pretty much the sameDriving a dramatic move toward the cloud. A recent study by Donna Fluss at DMG showed that CC seats grew by 26% to 340K seats in 2009 and then by 42% in 2010By June of 2011 had 871K seatsPredicts continuing growth of more than 40% per year
In terms of share of Contact Center Seats- 2.2% in 20085.9 % in 2011Predict over 18% by 2015
I’d like to point you to a great book about virtual work environments. It’s called “The Year Without Pants”. In it the author, Scott Berkun, who was previously a Microsoft program manager, leads a team of developers for WordPress. WordPress (or Autmattic the company behind wordpress) is 100% virtual. (old school guy going to a new school company)All employees virtualAll employees first start by working in customer service (“Happiness Engineers”)They are divided into a series of teams that are completely autonomous. They decide what to build, when to ship.NOT JUST ABOUT DEPLOYING A WORK AT HOME PROGRAM – BUT ABOUT THE VARY NATURE OF WORK ITSELF, how is can offer meaning and value to employees when barriors to success are removed (no beauracray, flat org, easy to make decissions, evaluated and reward based on the results they produceIn another book called “The History of Work”, Richard Donkin describes how the ancient traditions of the Australian Yir-Yoront tribe, fist discovered in 1903 and previously untouched by modern humans had no distinction between work and play. - They do have a word- “woq” that is used to refer to various tasks and chores. But the chores – this “woq” – did not include hunting. Hunting, the most fundamental activity in a hunter-gathering society, was not viewed as work. Wor seemed to be veiwed as something they would rather not be doing. Isn’t this concept – something I would rather not be doing – one of the most recognizable definitions of work for most of us”?All of these are expert as leveraging technology to help them success - First WordPress itself is a SaaS application - Hire by trial - Although the book focuses primarily on software development. It begins by illustrating how “happiness engineers” are made to have a critical and valued role within the organization. - Results for each happiness engineer are posted publically, creating friendly competition and motivation - Use IRC as a communication channel - Use something called a P2 – to share and record discussions - extensive use of Skype and instant message and chat - all employees had great communications skills - CULTURE where employees (e.g. Happiness Engineers” ) can ask for help online and others rush to offer help - performance in technical support is used as a indicator of future success at the company – MONITORING OUTPUT
Teddy Liaw: John Stewart:PatrickMckenna:Teddy and Patrick were executive with LiveOps before starting NexRep and deciding to work with us at Five9
In 2005 recruits, contracts, and certifies sales agents who work from home.450 NexRep agents (using 115 concurrent Five9 licenses )located in 35+ US states handle hundreds of thousands of calls every week,Based in Portland, Maine, NexRep is a sales-driven call center specializing in direct response marketing forbusinesses, including hair salon chain Drybar, prominent direct retailer Tristar Products (HealthMaster, Flex~AbleHose, Genie Bra), and clothing and household retailer Orchard Brands (Appleseed’s).
Five9 makes this happen. The skills-based routing capability of the Five9 platform allows NexRep to identify acaller’s needs based on the telephone number dialed, the caller’s number, or any choices the caller made throughthe Five9-enabled IVR system. Then Five9 automatically routes the call to the NexRep agent whose skills andexperience best match the caller’s needs. “That means better service to our clients,” Liaw says. As a result, NexRepis able to consistently deliver more than 30 percent more revenue per call opportunity than its competitors.
According to Liaw, the Five9 cloud contact center solution helps NexRep ramp up customer campaigns with amazingspeed. Recently, NexRep brought on a large new client that was launching eight different sales campaigns. The Five9technical support staff helped NexRep add 50 agents quickly and configure its agent pools, and NexRep went on tohelp the customer quadruple sales revenues in just eight weeks. But that wasn’t the best part.
- Skill Groups& Call Routing: are an area of competitive advantage. Also use as an incentive for agents to get more calls by showing that they can disposition those calls with the desired results. Another area in which Five9 excels is configuring agent pools. “The worst thing that can happen is to have agentssit idly,” Liaw says. “If you’re not configured correctly, inefficiencies are exacerbated, and your business can crumble.”Administratoro The folders on the left are the components to setup your call center. We'll briefly go through several of them and wrap it up by creating a live inbound and outbound campaign.o The admin adds users, creates and changes IVR call flows and more.o Users can be added or removed, you enable permissions and configuration including their skills, whether or not you want to enable call recording.o Roles are a way to quickly apply a preset list of roles, permissions, skills and more. Great for larger centers and quick setup.o Groups allow you to group agents and supervisors together, especially reporting.o Skills allow you to target calls to users. · Skills are applied to agents or vice versa. · Agent can have multiple skills and each skill has a level which is the agents proficiency. · This can be used to route calls to a specific agent as can round robin, longest wait and more. · Finally, you can add voicemail to a skill in the event no agent is available or for after hours.o Dispositions report on what happened to the call.· There are standard system dispositions such as answering machine, fax, voicemail.· There are also custom dispositions which allow agents to report on the outcome of a call. These include case closed, wrong number, sale made and more.· An especially powerful feature of dispositions is there ability to drive workflow and subsequent dialing rules.§ For example, a disposition of sale can trigger an email or notification to be sent to a manager.§ A disposition of promise to pay may automatically send all these call recording to a specific location.§ A disposition can also drive when a number is redialed or if its removed from the dialing plan in the case of DNC.o Lists are used to add phone numbers and details to an outbound campaign. · Lists can be manually entered but are most often uploaded from a flat file. · Lists can also be created dynamically such as with a web to lead page.· Lists are added to campaigns where they are filtered by criteria to ensure the best are dialed first or a specific state is dialed first.· Dialing rules are configured in the Actions/Configuration area to ensure you follow state dialing rules.o IVR is used to create the call flows, the press 1, 2, 3 to route the call to the correct skill or offer self service. · Generally speaking, if you can whiteboard it, you can build it in the very easy to use, visual, drag and drop environment.· The IVR features play prompts, digit collection and even access to integration points using the query module.§ Drag in weather alert.· Each module is available for reporting which is why its important to use descriptive names. § Show prompts, branches, query and skill transfer module· The query module allows you to do lookups using 3rd party web service and include the result in your report, transfer or rules.· The skill transfer module is where you establish your distribution type, queue time rules, offer estimated wait time and call back feature and more. · This is where you create all of the what ifs...what if there is a long hold time, what ifo Now we're ready to bring it all together with a Campaign.· Campaigns are where you apply all of the above modules to create an inbound or outbound program. Each tab features an area to refine how your campaign is built.· Inbound§ Call recording and if so, where.§ The DNIS or phone numbers which will be pointed at this campaign§ Post call surveys are included.§ The IVR(s) which will be part of this campaign and notice the feature of multiple IVRs to support after hours or holiday rules.§ Prompts for callers on hold, a great place to include brief promotional messaging and even a whisper to alert the agent of a specific campaign to better prepare them.§ Dispositions as we mentioned earlier.§ Connectors. Being from the CRM world, this is a fantastic feature to easily exchange information with a web based application using an HTTP GET or POST. Connectors can include multiple variables in addition to the base URL. The Get and Post takes the connector beyond a basic screen pop to a powerful tool a business user can create.§ Worksheets are tools which allow your agent to follow a path in order to come to a resolution such as troubleshooting: is your cable box on or off, is it blinking blue or red with logical branching.§ Scripts are web pages or HTML that present your agent with information as the call arrives and can capture data as the call progresses which is posted back to the call record.· Outbound§ Many of the same feature as an inbound campaign but some important aspect when placing outbound calls.· Dialing options: predictive, preview, progressive and powerPreview Dialer· Provide agents an opportunity to review a contact's details prior to placing calls to the contact's phone numbers.Predictive Dialer· An algorithm based on agents, availability, connect rate and more. This over dials, calls multiple numbers to one agent to boost productivity by automatically calling multiple contacts based on estimated agent availability, filtering out no-party-contacts.Progressive Dialer· Automatically call individual contacts when an agent becomes available, filtering out no-party-contacts.· Administrators can select drop call percentage and call analysis (how to address fax and answering machines)Power Dialer· You define the call/dial ration, including drop call % (3% recommended) . Increase productivity by simultaneously calling multiple contacts when an agent becomes available, filtering out no-party-contacts.· Same as progressive, but add the ability to select how many calls should be placed per available agent.· Lists, which are your lists to dial. Note, the filtering of these lists was discussed earlier in the list section.
Blended: For example, sometimes a consumer calls in or goes to a client’s website and does not complete an order. Usingthe Five9 outbound dialer, NexRep agents call the consumer back—as the consumer’s history of activity appearson the agent’s computer screen—and offer to help. Says Liaw, “Being able to sit on top of a world-class platformlike Five9 has been extremely beneficial.”Agento Show how agent is in a not ready state and how they change their state based on what they are doing. You can also report on this like a payroll report.· Supervisors have a view into what the agent is doing and even created alerts, change colorso Show how different options on the right are available or ghosted, this is based on permission. o Go readyo Place an inbound call or start outbound campaign· Inbound (888) 989-7445o Show the screen pop with the limited info. Show the basic contact manager.o Script: Talk about how the script came into focus along with information collected in the IVR or from the contact manager.o Connectors: These are quick and easy ways to communicate with web based applications, anything from a CRM to Google. Connectors can be manually started or automatically started based on an event...ring, call connected, etc. Show how the embedded browser searched Google for the caller's company name. You can even pop different URLs based on call type or variables collected in the IVR.o Conference allows your agent to conference their call with a queue or specific user, even speed dial. Agents can see the queue in the General tab to check on availability. After a conference, the agent dispositions why they did a transfer for reporting purposes. o Redial - any rep gets the request, it goes back into the dialing plan. Callback: Agents can also setup times to call someone back.o IM, chat or request help.o Logout allows you to determine what your agents are currently doing, plus a great tool for payroll. DO NOT LOG OUT.
Supervisoro The supervisor view is a real-time dashboard to view agents, campaigns and ACD.o Supervisors can see all calls in queue, agent state, average call durations and make adjustments to agents and skills in real-time.o Right click on agent to monitor them in real-time. · Monitor, whisper, barge ino You'll see these colors, they are alerts which supervisors can setup to show colors, alerts or emails.o Show user performance in bottom left hand corner:· If he's busy, his occupancy, his utilization· Drag columns around and compare him to his peers· Show agent state by double-clickingo Just the user can, supervisors can send alerts, 1-ways messages (we are slammed, wrap up your calls) or engaged in a 1-1 or many to many chat session
Supervisoro The supervisor view is a real-time dashboard to view agents, campaigns and ACD.o Supervisors can see all calls in queue, agent state, average call durations and make adjustments to agents and skills in real-time.o Right click on agent to monitor them in real-time. · Monitor, whisper, barge ino You'll see these colors, they are alerts which supervisors can setup to show colors, alerts or emails.o Show user performance in bottom left hand corner:· If he's busy, his occupancy, his utilization· Drag columns around and compare him to his peers· Show agent state by double-clickingo Just the user can, supervisors can send alerts, 1-ways messages (we are slammed, wrap up your calls) or engaged in a 1-1 or many to many chat session
Characterized by:Move toward greater flexibly for employees driven by mobile technologies and new philosophy about how to workChanges demands placed on the contact center by social media – the need for better tools, more skilled agentsTrend toward cloud services which give you:Faster deploymentFlexibily (pay as you go and scale on demand)More productive agents and the ability to use at-homeMore control over costs – limit upfront costs and risk