Driving down call center costs and driving up customer satisfaction are two perennial focuses of every contact center. “How can we cut expenses while not impacting customer service levels?”

Take a moment to really understand that previous sentence.  How can a contact center spend less while not adding frustration to customers? What about spending less and actually improving service levels. Isn’t that a better value proposition?  Of course it is. Forensics-based computer telephony integration (CTI) technology can make this possible. 

Imagine a customer calls in and your agents are immediately (within milliseconds) provided withCTI screen pops that tell them everything they need to know about the caller without the person even saying a word. And we aren’t talking about run of the mill screen pops.  This is different. We’re talking about intelligent, situational, highly relevant intelligence about the caller that is presented to the agent.

The agents saves inordinate amounts of time not having to collect data and the caller is greeted by a service rep that is truly ready to start helping them, immediately, by having the data in hand that help them anticipate what the call is about. You see, the agent is instantly provided with important details about the customer’s existing relationship with your business. Agents have immediate access to purchase history, trouble tickets, and other intelligently surmised “event” data. nt in a meaningful way that enables them to better serve the customer. 

Systems exist today that can read between the lines of all the customer data and make smart determinations and present them to the agent as formulated knowledge.  Examples might include the agent right away already knowing: 

1. The reason the caller is late on payment – based on an unresolved trouble ticket the customer has been dealing with for weeks. The system understands the situation and presumes the caller is “holding out” on payment until the issue is resolved. With this intelligence in hand, the service rep is armed with full understanding of the dilemma and can easily and personally address the caller’s challenges. The agent would already know how many times the customer called in, what the issues were, how much the caller owes and how overdue it is, as well as full payment history of the customer previous to this incident. If the agent learns, for example, that this individual has paid on time for three straight years, he/she can give the person a break this time and work to help them resolve their outstanding issue. 

1. The customer is primed for a product/service upgrade – based on intelligence gathered around purchase history, payment history, customer support data and a rules-based engine. The agent will already know the general satisfaction level of the customer, the fact that the caller has growing needs (such as having recently added a new line to their cell phone calling plan, for instance). The agent can leverage this knowledge to present the upgrade offer to the customer and have a much higher success rate than perhaps with other less primed callers. 

This screen pop customer forensics data is intelligently gathered from your call center’s PBX, ACD, billing system, CRM system, customer support database, ODBC data stores and more. The CTI server uses associated telephony data such as ANI, caller ID, DNIS and UUI to build the story. This story is also fed from a rules-based engine that feeds additional demographics data such as buying propensity and purchasing behaviors. 

What’s more, this intelligence can be attached to the call so it comes along with any transferred calls so the next agent has the same data right on their screen.  Think of the service continuity, time savings and tremendous positive impact on the satisfaction of your customers and even your agents. 

Today’s contact centers are more critical to an organization today than ever before, given the heightened sophistication and expectations of the customer. Contact centers must do everything they can to stay ahead of the competition, and the customer. Rapid fire, deep forensics-based CTI provides contact centers with that edge. The result is faster call resolution, more informed agents, happier customers, more revenue opportunities, increased customer loyalty, substantial cost savings and much improved employee morale.