Intelligent Routing of Customer Interactions
The way that a customer‘s phone call or e-mail is delivered to a particular agent considerably affects the customer’s overall satisfaction with the provided service or information. CAROL provides all state of-the-art customer interaction routing methods. There is basically no routing requirement that could not be implemented in the CAROL solution. Contact center supervisors and agents can take advantage of the Contact History Browser tool, which provides in-depth analysis and tracking capabilities about all customer interactions handled by agents in the past. Not only does it display the details of each interaction, but also allows retrieving the corresponding content (e-mail message, voice message, etc.)
Multimedia
CAROL doesn‘t only handle voice calls. E-mails and faxes delivered to public corporate e-mail addresses and fax numbers or web-chat requests are processed and routed in a similar way as are customer phone calls. The content of each incoming e-mail can be automatically analyzed and scanned for pre-defined keywords, helping the system to identify the sender‘s needs and deliver the message to the appropriate agent. Setting the priority for each communication channel optimizes agent utilization – phone calls are usually handled with the highest priority, whereas e-mails and faxes fill gaps and offpeak periods in contact center operations. Missed calls from VIP customers, for example, can be returned to the contact center as CallBack notifications. It is thus possible to reinsert any important missed call into the routing process for follow-up processing. CallBack requests can also be entered manually by customers using the web pages or an IVR. The possibility of leaving a voice message can be offered to the caller at any time; for example if the customer calls outside of business hours or during the peak time period. Recorded voice messages are then distributed among the appropriate agents and handled accordingly.
Outbound campaigns
The CAROL Outbound component allows its users to automate telephone campaigns in order to address large numbers of customers. The physical list of phone numbers to be dialed for the campaign can be imported from virtually any data source using the CAROL Outbound import tools. As the Outbound component is an integral part of the CAROL solution, the efficiency of campaign management and the utilization rate of the assigned agents increases rapidly. Moreover, the call blending mechanism allows blending inbound and outbound calls and utilizing idle agents during off-peak periods for outbound campaigns or vice versa. The ratio of call volume that will be blended is adjustable by the campaign supervisor. The call dialing itself can be performed in all common dialing modes (predictive, preview and power). Since unsuccessful calls (busy, no answer, etc.) are handled automatically rather than delivered to the agent, the efficiency of outbound campaigns can be increased up to 400% as compared to manual dialing. CAROL also offers a scripting tool that automates customer surveys and answer collection and provides detailed reporting about the campaign.
Reporting
Monitoring of contact center operations based on real-time statistics allows the responsible employees to observe interaction density, agent states, number of interactions waiting for agents, service level, and plenty of other statistical values related to contact center operation. These figures will also help the contact center management to better identify customer needs and behavior and adjust the quality and quantity of the contact center staff accordingly. Historical reports are the most important source of information for agent competence assessment and motivation, long-term operation planning as well as for product and service portfolio optimization.
Interactive Voice Response
The IVR component, which is fully integrated into the CAROL framework, provides not only standard IVR features like playing announcements or DTMF input, but also an advanced functionality which is not available in most competitor solutions. Calling customers are given information about their queue position or the estimated waiting time via voice message, they can then record a voice message, which is distributed to and processed by the competent agent, or they can simply request a CallBack.
CTI Integration
The CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) technology, based on which the CAROL solution was developed, enables the communication between telephony switching (PBX) and the IT world. Using CTI, the agent application receives detailed information about the calling customer in real time. This allows the agent desktop application to pop up customer details with all the call-related information as soon as the phone starts to ring. CTI also allows agents to fully control their telephones from within the software application, making it easier for them to concentrate on the communication with the customer, while the computer keyboard remains the only tool they have to work with. The CTI technology helps to speed up return on invest and leads to higher customer satisfaction.