The Call Center Operations group of a major telecommunications company struggled with the system that supported its 13,000+ customer service representatives (CSRs). The system, originally designed for content authoring, was plagued with problems.
- Content was stored in multiple locations and in multiple formats, making it difficult for the CSRs to find information quickly.
- The system was unable to present the information by geographic region—a necessity for the regulated telecommunications industry.
- The majority of the content was only available in long, cumbersome technical documents—not a format to support CSR interactions with customers.
- The search functionality was ineffective, often retrieving a large number of irrelevant results.
These problems were causing degradation in call center performance and negatively impacting customer satisfaction levels.
On a prior consulting assignment at this company, Iknow led the design of a new, comprehensive CSR solution. Now, the client wanted Iknow to design and architect the new call center technology platform. Iknow, working with the client’s internal IT division and a large systems integrator, designed the multiple components of the new CSR portal and enterprise content management (ECM) system.
The project team conducted a series of requirements-gathering sessions, where various end user and management groups were brought together to capture and document their specific business requirements. The requirements were analyzed, ranked, and compiled into a business requirements document. Results from a parallel, rapid prototyping exercise were incorporated into the design. Once the requirements were approved by stakeholders, Iknow created a detailed project implementation plan.
Iknow worked with the client’s IT division during the detailed design phase. The application design process required expertise in interface design, content management system architecture and implementation, search engine design and tuning, taxonomy development, and portal technology.
The resulting system was based on a commercial ECM product and customized to meet the client’s business and technical requirements.
The new system was enthusiastically welcomed by the CSR workforce. It contained numerous improvements in content access, presentation, and management. For example, the new application presented accurate content based on the CSR’s role and geographic region. Content was converted from documents into a highly indexed, searchable repository, and was accessible through a web interface.
Performance improved across all key call-center metrics, including higher levels of customer satisfaction, shorter call-handling times, increased first-call resolution, and reduced overall call-center costs.