Business process automation software: How it promotes high-quality customer service

In today's call center, computer-telephony integration (CTI) is usually used reactively. Nevertheless, many companies prefer a proactive approach in their relations with customers. These companies will seek out a new model for CTI.

Although its history is short, telemarketing-oriented CTI is already undergoing significant change. And what is driving this change? The keen competition in industries that have bet their futures on achieving continuous improvement in one area: customer service. On a continuum of reactive call handling versus proactive customer relationship building, CTI is at a crossroads. At present, CTI is beginning to advance a new concept: business process automation (BPA).

BPA has become an appropriate technology not only in the call center environment, but in other business settings, including: 1) companies that need to manage an ongoing relationship with the customer and are continually communicating on complex issues; 2) the smaller, workgroup-style environment; and 3) knowledge workers who use the telephone and computer throughout the day. Call centers, however, are the immediate beneficiaries of BPA strategies.

Call Center Islands

To date, call centers have been islands--detached from the rest of the enterprise and operating independently, often with separate and disparate databases and information. However, once it has been brought into the fold of the enterprise, the call center can become as crucial a corporate resource as the company's local area networks (LANs). Ideally, the call center should be integrated with all other parts of the enterprise to tap information and databases that allow call center agents to better serve calling customers.

Further, from a proactive perspective, key databases may trigger calls that need to be placed before a customer considers calling. For example, an office supply store may know it has a customer who orders 10 reams of paper every two months. This information can be used to trigger a call from an agent, who can then determine whether the customer is in fact ready to re-order. Such an action exemplifies the BPA approach: building bridges between the call center and the rest of the enterprise to move information more effectively.

Proving Ground

How BPA impacts call centers will be a good indication of tomorrow's applications. Call centers must maintain all of their advanced capabilities while adding a layer of flexibility, and enhancing call center capabilities will, for the most part, be accomplished with software. Take, for example, a patient who calls a medical clinic with a question. When the call is received, not only should the medical history appear on the computer screen of the person answering the call, appropriate programs should be launched to handle the call and/or patient needs. In addition, the software should be able to trigger a page to the patient's private physician if necessary. Fax links also should be automatic, providing complete management of information flow.

To make such scenarios everyday business realities, call centers must adopt an integrated approach; that is, call centers need to evolve with the enterprise and interact with other business areas as needed to better satisfy the customer. BPA promotes such changes by mandating the integration of five key resources: 1) employees, 2) information, 3) computers, 4) communications and, clearly, 5) the customer.

Integrating such disparate business resources--to the degree advocated by BPA--is unprecedented. Nonetheless, this new approach promises to elevate the way people interact with databases, applications, communications equipment, customers and each other. The ultimate goal is to achieve continuous customer service improvement.

Equal Time

BPA software is the first to fully exploit the depth of enterprisewide resources. That is, unlike computer-telephony middleware, which works on the back end (by moving data between a telephone switch and a personal computer), BPA software also provides high impact on the front end. This "equal time" approach makes BPA far more effective in call centers.

Front End: Making previously unavailable data "actionable" will mean the difference between simple screen pops that offer limited information, and the ability to anticipate customers' needs. Unlocking the power of dormant data requires action processing software, which is the "automation" function of front-end BPA tools.

Action processing goes beyond initial screen pops by integrating, launching and controlling multiple applications activated during a single transaction. This kind of attention on the front end enables the worker to establish a whole new way of doing business.

Back End: While much attention has been paid to the front end of communications applications, the back end certainly can't be ignored. Automating the back end of a call can shave up to 20 minutes or more off the total transaction time. The wrap up consists of many tasks, most of which are repetitive and require no human brainpower, such as paging on-site technical support, e-mailing the assigned sales representative, logging the time spent on a call into the enterprise billing system, or faxing a service evaluation report to the customer. These back-end issues have long been neglected by call center systems, and can be accomplished simply and easily--and automatically--with software.

Evolution Is Natural

In most companies, the call center and its role in the enterprise evolve over time. The call center usually starts small, with little or no connection to the other areas of the company. As budgets allow, new hardware and software are added, and each department grows and becomes its own entity, pushing the call center island even farther out to sea.

Disparate operating systems and communications systems; assorted databases; and multiple critical applications all become part of the enterprise. This isn't unusual. Businesses routinely incorporate multiple host platforms and software applications as one system may better suit a department's overall needs than another.

The problem for the call center is how to accommodate all this diversity. That is, in any single telephone transaction. it may be necessary to access information from any or all of a collection of disparate host platforms, desktop equipment, communications equipment, software applications and databases. A complex task, to be sure. Yet navigating through such complexity is a necessity for the call center that is committed to customer service.

Customers don't care that a sales representative may need to launch a contact management application and then access billing information, or that technical support representatives may need to retrieve files from the sales department's databases, which may be stored in two or three different applications. Customers simply want their orders taken and questions answered--quickly and accurately.

Preserving The Legacy

Although many call centers work with disparate technological solutions, few can afford to scrap even a piecemeal computing or communications system in favor of a unified solution merely to take advantage of new technologies. The BPA concept, however, does point to an alternative. BPA, along with action processing software, provides a seamless method for cutting across otherwise incompatible operating platforms, software applications and desktop or server-based resources.

Call centers should promote a consistency of service regardless of the vast diversity of agents. By putting a common system in place that pervades all agents' activity, the call center can deliver consistent service and, ultimately, a consistently high quality of service. Regardless of changes in representatives, the way a customer is handled should remain the same. This can be accomplished through software that automates repetitive tasks and frees the agents to conduct more issues-oriented tasks.

The New Call Center

Powerful BPA software takes call centers to a higher level. Some types of data may be harder to find and summon. Older files or information that hasn't been previously assimilated may not be readily available. Still, when this information is needed during a transaction, no one likes to wait. Action processing can seek out this information and deliver it to the agent without putting customers on hold for extended periods of time--if at all.

BPA also recognizes loyal, long-standing customers who may want to deal with only one customer service representative. BPA can also accommodate a customer who wants to speak with the same agent twice in a day. Such a customer may have his or her call routed back to the original agent who took the call. Other customers may want confirmation of their transactions after each conversation. Some want faxes, while others prefer e-mail. Interaction with different communications tools tailors customer service to meet the demands of individual customers and raises the level of personalized service a call center offers.

The impact of BPA on today's call center will be profound because it builds bridges to the "stranded island" and makes it an integral part of the enterprise. Further, it gives the call center new-found access to information and can do so in real-time--accommodating multiple databases, host platforms, desktop applications and communications systems. BPA and associated software can script the launching and linking of applications into a task flow that supports individual user needs while also accommodating departmental or workgroup differences.

Making data actionable and available through multiple applications in real-time will redefine the call center environment, but most important, it will improve customer service. BPA tools allow representatives to get to know the customer, conduct transactions and respond to inquiries quickly and accurately--all of which translates into stellar customer satisfaction and a new standard by which to measure customer service quality.

Jeanne Bayless is founder and president of AnswerSoft, Inc., a leading provider of client/server-based applications software and services. Bayless brings to AnswerSoft 16 years of managerial experience. Her previous positions include being the chief financial officer/chief operations officer for Blyth Holdings, Inc., and new product development manager at Texas Instruments' Information Technology Division.

Copyright Technology Marketing Corporation Aug 1995
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