CHAPTER 3

Technology for Customer

Relationship

INTRODUCTION
Successful CRM implementation will allow your
Customer Service, sales and marketing people and
anyone else in your organization to have a holistic
view of each and everyone of your customers.
Service organizations are evolving to accommodate
rapidly changing customers requirements,
increased competitive pressure and business
imperatives to do more with less. Technology is a
key enabler to meet these demands.
The technology deployed has to be in line with
strategic objective of the organization.

Technology helps firms to have a holistic view of its

customers

It helps all the stakeholders in company to provide

a seamless, integrated services

CONTACT CENTER TECHNOLOGY

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Interactive Voice Response, IVR for short, is a
software application that allows a telephone caller
to select options (pre-recorded voice prompts) from
a voice menu.
Interactive Voice Response Systems are available
24 hours a day, seven days a week, so callers can
access them anywhere, anytime.

A TYPICAL CALL FLOW FOR IVR

IVR Platforms
IVR Applications
Back-end servers
Telephony Infrastructure
IVR Experts
Pros and Cons
Locating
Surveying

Order Processing
Outbound Applications
Call Transfer
After Hours Messages
On Hold Messaging
Voice Mail
Caller ID
Reporting

CONSIDERATIONS FOR AN
ORGANIZATION WHILE MAKING AN
BUYING DECISION

IVR

Hosted version vs. Installed version

Capacity/Scalability
Specialty
Demo
Integration/Implementation
Training and Support
Quality of Web Site
DTMF IVR and Speech recognition IVR systems

Benefits of Automation of Inbound calls

Reduced Costs, Increased ROI
Flexibility & Compatibility
Customer Satisfaction
Added Security
IVR utilizations for Business to customer (B2C)
applications

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SPEECH RECOGNITION FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

Speech recognition is often used in call centers to
improve customer service operations. It is specially
used for self service environment. Speech
recognition allows computers to recognize natural
human voice and translate it into text or actions
based on flow of the call.
Speech is most recognized for its role in contact
centers where the technology has proven to
dramatically increase automation rates and improve
the customer experience.

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KEY ENTERPRISE BENEFITS OF SPEECH ACCESS

AND VOICE AUTOMATION ARE:
Customer satisfaction
Cost savings
Improved Productivity
Revenue generation

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KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR DEPLOYING SPEECH

RECOGNITION:
The organizations must evaluate various options
available to them and determine which applications
will deliver the greatest customer and business
benefit and select specific metrics for success.
The organization must investigate on design and
development and deployment alternatives.
The organizations must determine which standards
help maximize the use of existing IT and call center
investments.

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The organization should be very clear with their

customer communication policy. Accordingly a
technology platform can be determined for
deployment.
Select a vendor with a strong ecosystem of expert
partners and proven leadership and experience in
integrating voice and speech communications
technology.

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COMPUTER TELEPHONY INTEGRATION (CTI)

Computer telephony integration enables integration
of previously disparate systems to enhance the
customer experience and improve operational
efficiencies.
CTI links up your computers and telephones to
handle all your voice, fax, and data traffic.

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HOW CTI APPLICATIONS CAN ENHANCE THE

INBOUND AGENTS EFFICIENCY?
Screen pops in which caller information and
associated files can be given to agent along with
the telephone call.
Intelligent transfer of data to another agent or
supervisor along with the callers detail on desktop.
Using live, recorded voice, or touch-tone entered
input, determine how to process a call.
Intelligent routing which help the caller by routing
the call to an agent as per predefined routing logic
like skill based, language based, product or zone
time based.

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Manage voice or video conferences.

Desktop telephony features, such as login and
logout, workstation changes, statistics on an agents
etc.
Receive fax messages and route them to
appropriate fax machines.
For outbound calling such as telemarketing, predial
callers.

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THE BENEFITS OF COMPUTER TELEPHONY

INTEGRATION CAN INCLUDE:
Improved customer service
Greater efficiency
Flexibility
CTI Solutions
Basic solutions
Advanced solutions

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AUTOMATIC CALL DISTRIBUTION (ACD)

ACD systems are the heart of inbound call centers.

They are call routing utilities for incoming calls and
can route the calls to the available agent. Basic
ACD distributes the telephone calls on a first come,
first served basis. The system answers each call
immediately and, if necessary, holds it in a queue
until it can be directed to the next available call
center agent. When an agent becomes free, he or
she services the first caller in the queue.

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MAJOR HIGHLIGHTS OF ACD SYSTEM

Evenly distributes a large volume of calls to a group of

telephone agents.
A designated ACD Supervisor has the ability to monitor calls
to ensure that callers are getting accurate information.
Calls are routed to the agent who has been idle longest.
If all agents are busy, calls are stacked in a queue to wait for
the next available agent.
If the queue becomes too full, additional calls are routed to a
designated network treatment.
After hours, calls can be routed to a Night Service destination,
usually a voice mail message.
Best suited to departments receiving requests of a repetitive
nature or frequent calls addressing common question.

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MAJOR COMPONENTS OF AN ACD SYSTEM

Call processing features
Agent features
Supervisor features

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METHODS OF CALL DISTRIBUTION

Direct Department Calling
Uniform Call Distribution
Expert Agent Distribution

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KEY CALL HANDLING FEATURES OF AN ACD

Call Hold
Call Transfer
Call Forward
Three-Way Calling
Station Hunting
Call Pickup Group
Call Park
Camp-On with Callback

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CUSTOMER COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT

TECHNOLOGY

The technology for complaint management system

is generally divided into two parts namely front end
and back end. The front end is used by the
employees who are dealing with the customers for
taking their complaints and communicating back a
solution to them. Back end systems are used by the
employees who are responsible for resolution of
customer complaints.

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The front end of customer complaint management

system comprises of:
Customer profile page
Customer interaction page
The back end part comprises of:
Complaint resolution page Pages where solution
is provided and Root cause is found
MIS page MIS helps in monitoring complaint
resolution and keeping track of the same, it
provides reports

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BENEFITS OF COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM
Enhanced productivity of employees
Speedy and Error-free resolution of complaints
Troubleshooting and probing help
Monitoring and tracking mechanism
Singular database and customer history
Wide angle view of customer

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FRONT DESK MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Electronic Queue Management System
The Electronic queue system is ideal for customer
related concerns, where waiting forms an essential
part of the service.

Airlines, Hospitals, Banks, Railway Stations etc

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ELECTRONIC QUEUE MANAGEMENT MODULES

Ticket dispenser unit Customers obtain a ticket
from ticket dispenser unit
Status dispenser unit Strategically placed in the
waiting area, it displays the ticket number along
with the counter where he has to move
Teller station unit It is used by the counter staff
Counter Display Unit Displays the ticket number
of the customer being served

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PAYMENT TECHNOLOGY

Bill payment kiosks typically include a computer

inside of a durable enclosure. The kiosks can be
customized to suit the organizational needs and
one can put their company logo or corporate
images on the outer of machine.

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The capabilities of a bill payment kiosk machine are:

Authenticates the customer
Accepts and dispenses cash
Accepts credit/debit card payments
Accepts check payments
Full network management
Real-time system monitoring
Software updated remotely
Narrowcast digital advertising
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Benefits for the service provider:

Improves staff utilization
Improves retail space utilization
Cuts customer wait time
Increases customer satisfaction
Reduces or eliminates balancing errors
Reduces operational costs
Cuts back office error and expense
Supports additional applications
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CUSTOMER SELF SERVICE PORTALS

The self service modules provide the opportunity to

customers to access his account and get lots of
information as and when he wants and from
wherever he wants.

Example Vodafone my account

The self service applications help the customers in

following ways:
Empowering of the customers
Improve supply chain efficiency
Reduce cost of service

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The self service modules generally come into two

forms:
Fulfillment Self Service - Examples Futurebazaar.com, Flipkart etc
Sales Force Management Self Service

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CRM TECHNOLOGY

CRM is not just a piece of technology. It is an

organizational commitment to add value to its
customers during every interaction. It is the
summation of technology, processes, business
rules, customer knowledge and above all, the
organizational strategy.

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Most of the CRM applications focus on the two

aspects of the business namely operational and
analytical.
The operational part of CRM refers to automating
basic business functions such as sales automation,
service guidelines and marketing tactics. It also
includes the facilitation of customer communication,
including Web, phone, fax, etc.
The analytical part of CRM is geared around
gathering business intelligence from customers that
can be used to analyze customer behavior.

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CRITERIA FOR CRM PRODUCT SELECTION

Organization imperative
Integration with existing IT application landscape
Products adaptability
Scalability of the application
Implementation experience
Post roll out support structure

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DATA MINING

Data mining is a methodology to assess the value

of the data and to leverage that value as an asset
to provide valuable information for decision making
to management based on a continuously evolving
analytical model.

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DATA MINING METHODS

Statistics
Decision Trees

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DATA WAREHOUSING

In customer service one of the most important

assets is the customer data base. The organization
must have the details of all the transactions
covering the entire customer life cycle. This data
should also be available to all the users so that they
can make data based decisions. The data based
decisions are generally better than the decisions
based on the hunch or gut. Data warehouses are
generally used to store large customer data.

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