| The ongoing technology evolution continues to create new opportunities for historically different technologies to be synergized into one combined solution. Ever since the birth of the modern call center, organizations have been spending their budgets on solutions that integrate calls from customers (inbound calls) and the information the call center agent sees on the screen (aka screen pops). The value of this solution is that it makes the agent more efficient, reduces call times, and most importantly, can improve the customer's experience which in turn keeps the customer spending money with the organization.
| |
|
Evaluate CTI
Learn how you can CTI enable your Onyx implementation to improve the productivity and effectiveness of your sales, service, and support teams. Call today...
| |
| But while it seems simple, the task of integrating phones and computers has traditionally been costly and complex. Phone and computer network technologies have evolved along different paths, and only in the last few years have the integration costs become affordable. But delivering the customer on the phone and their information on the computer to the agent's desktop is only the beginning of the story. Understanding how the client was routed to the agent, how long the call took to complete, the total number of calls and minutes to resolve an issue are all equally important to running a successful call center. Fortunately, you have a host of potential solutions at hand.
Inbound Calls
It seems like magic. At the exact same time that your phone rings, the customer's record opens in Onyx on your desktop, enabling you to begin communicating with the customer in seconds, not minutes, and saving the wasted time of searching for the customer record. There are several steps to making the magic work.
Click for larger version.
- A customer calls your organization.
- The call is answered by your phone switch. Some switches provide an automated attendant which enables the customer to provide an extension, search for someone by name, or speak with an operator. At this point, the phone switch can use Caller ID to identify the caller, and may know if the caller is interested in a specific product or promotional offer based upon the number they called.
- A more sophisticated automated attendant is called an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system. An IVR can ask the customer to provide additional data either by selecting numbers on the keypad or by using voice recognition. Typically, you might use an IVR to ask for an account number, or direct a customer to an appropriate queue based on product and even type of question.
- At this point, the path branches. Typically the IVR or the Phone Switch will include logic for routing a call to a specific agent or queue. At the same time, the additional data gathered during the call can be used to lookup a specific record in Onyx.
- Only when the phone system determines which specific agent will get the call is the call delivered to the agent's phone, and the customer's record opened in the agent's Onyx window.
Outbound Calls
Some organizations also have telesales or telemarketing organizations that make calls to customers off of daily call lists. These call lists are derived from data in Onyx and may be part of an outbound campaign - for example, offering the customer a trial of a new product or service or reminding a customer of a pending contract renewal.
- The rep opens a list of customers to call from the campaign. This list can be in Task Manager, List Manager, or the Green Beacon Call List Manager.
- The rep can then click on the record to see additional information about the customer before making the call. Most reps open the History tab to review any recent relevant contact with the customer.
- Onyx passes the customer's phone number to the phone system, and the rep begins their conversation or leaves a message.
Solution Components
Making all of this work is easy if you have the right tools and the right partner. There are several key components to your Onyx CTI solution.
- Onyx's CTI Toolbar
Onyx's CTI toolbar runs as part of the Onyx product across the bottom of the screen. The toolbar enables agents to sign in and out of their queue, accept or reject an incoming call, set an idle state, make outbound calls, conference others in on the call, and transfer a call to another agent or queue.
- Onyx Scripting
Onyx Call Scripting provides a wizard based interface that helps improve the productivity of your marketing, sales, and service/support representatives by guiding them along pre-determine call paths. With an inbound call, for example, the script could be automatically opened with the customer's contact information for verification, new contact information can be added, a support incident updated and a task created, all from the wizard interface. For outbound calls, scripted conversations can be displayed to help ensure that reps are pitching products and services effectively. The ability to integrate scripting with inbound and outbound CTI makes it a natural fit for call center, service / support, and telesales / telemarketing organizations.
- UpstreamWorks eMedia Server
The Upstream Works eMedia Server is the œglue- between your phone system (and IVR) and your Onyx CRM. Upstream Works has done all of the difficult work building a trusted, tested, and proven integration between the Onyx CTI toolbar and leading phone solutions from Avaya, Nortel, and Cisco.
Professional Services
The most important part of getting any CTI project up and running is finding the right trusted advisors that will work with you and your team to understand your business requirements and ensure a successful deployment that you can support long term. Whether it's implementing the Onyx CTI toolbar, integrating the toolbar with your phone system, or developing reports that help you measure the true success of your business, the combined Green Beacon and Upstream Works team brings years of experience and proven solutions to your project. |