I have much more respect for the people working at call centers – it’s a hard work, you’re always under attack from customers, everything is quantified and you need to get permission to leave your station. After observing a rep for 15min I was done, needed a break, and some coffee.
Earlier this week I visited a call center at one of our customers, with almost a hundred representatives. We’re working with the IT and business folks to introduce a managed desktop approach, that can transform the work of the center. The local rep. we watched handled 10 calls in 35min, switching between 4-6 different applications per call: IBM mainframe, Oracle DB, FileNet ECM, CRM application, Messaging solution, corporate portal and the IVR of course. That’s a lot of information to process, with multiple systems to master – and the training period is long, 3-4 months for a new employee. That’s a lot.
The rep we observed had a screen that looked similar to the one below:
On the top there was the IVR, showing where the customer was calling from; most of the activity was done in a 3270 terminal (direct access to the mainframe) – which was at full screen, although the info needed for the call could have been resized to a 1/4 of the screen size; other information was handled via the DB; campaign and marketing info came from the corporate intranet; CRM was also present of course; between calls she went to her Inbox to check for new emails.
Here’s how a managed desktop looks like at European bank, one of the many examples we presented:
There’s a centralized view of a customer, starting from a summary of his contact information (maybe even a photo), recent transactions from the mainframe (using HATS), web service for maps, full customer history from CRM application, relevant e-forms, instant messaging contacts list, scans of invoices and more. All in one view, pre-wired behind the scenes.
IBM Lotus Expeditor is the solution that can transform your call center. With Lotus Expeditor (once called Workplace Client Technology) you can integrate multiple backend systems – 3270, .Net applications, Messaging, IVR, J2EE, DBs, IM and others – in one screen, inter-connected.
There are numerous customer references and best practices that we can share, specifically tailored to your industry. Give yourself a managed desktop experience, with IBM Lotus Expeditor.
Links:
IBM Lotus Expeditor
Whitepaper – Web 2.0 and rich internet applications (pdf)
IBM developerWorks – Lotus Expeditor for developers
IBM press release – Sprint uses Lotus Expeditor for Windows Mobile 6 smartphones
Podcast – Lotus Expeditor Podcast series
Wikipedia – IBM Lotus Expeditor
Lotus Expeditor wiki is the latest wiki to be published, with the same features and functions as all other Lotus and WebSphere Portal wikis: There’s a recent articles section, which can be syndicated, list of topics for easy navigation, learning section to help you get started with Lotus Expeditor, best practices section and links to external resources, such as product page on ibm.com, IBM Redbooks, discussion forums, etc. Reading the wiki is free of course, and anonymous, but commenting and contributing requires registration with Lotus.
