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April 9, 2001

The Modern Call Center

Web-enabled call centers let businesses provide improved customer service by combining the best of telephone and online communication

By Bob Wallace (bwallace@cmp.com) and George V. Hulme (ghulme@cmp.com)

Photo by Burke Uzzle

More on call centers:

sidebar: WorldCom Bets The Future On Its Web Center Service
InternetWeek: Nationwide Gets Big Picture (4/2/01)
InternetWeek: Marketing Automation Gives CRM A Lift (3/20/01)
InternetWeek: Real-Time Help Slashes Costs (2/2/01)

side from a warm facecloth delivered with tongs, there's not a lot of difference between the way Continental Airlines Inc. treats its first-class fliers and the perks it offers its 700 call-center agents who steadily field 13 million calls a year in the company's Tampa, Fla., reservations center. Agents at the center have tools and comforts beyond the basic phone, computer, and headset. Nearby amenities include a snack bar, a full corporate cafeteria, and a lounge lined with sofas.

But technology is the showcase capability here. From the PCs in their ergonomically designed cubicles, agents can access Continental's main reservations system, several soon-to-be-integrated customer databases, and any other in-house or third-party systems the airline may add. "The intent is to give our agents all the information they need on any front," says Larry Goodwin, VP of reservations at Continental. "Whether it's a complaint, a problem, or a frequent-flier administration issue, we want a single agent to be able to help from one point in our system."

Welcome to the modern call center. It's a mix of low-tech telephony and the latest in online collaborative technology. Its capabilities range from simultaneous interactive voice and data access over the Internet to the use of a Web page as the simple but time-saving first step in the service process. Web users who need extensive help click a call-back button to have an agent call them. Customers with less-complex questions use an instant text-chat feature to get answers from agents almost immediately.

In tight economic times, the competitive pressure to retain customers and attract new ones is enormous. Amidst a teetering economy, IT managers are trying to limit capital spending and cut costs wherever possible. The ability of Web-enabled call centers to enhance customer service and to close sales more quickly isn't only appealing, it can be crucial to the bottom line. Call-center agents who use E-mail, instant chat, and Web collaboration to interact with customers are able to more quickly and completely handle questions and resolve problems. When true to their promise, Web-enabled call centers deliver a superior level of customer service that goes far toward fostering customer loyalty. (For more on E-mail and customer service, see Tech Analyzer, "Customers Get The Message.")

Critical Component In a recent Forrester Research survey of 50 call-center managers, 70% say a Web-based call-center strategy is critical to their companies, and 26% have implemented Web call-center applications. Companies also should prepare for communications from customers by way of chat, collaboration, E-mail, and Web-based self-service to double. By next year, Forrester predicts, E-mail will grow from 9.8% to 17.3% of a company's total number of contacts with customers, while contacts by way of the Web will leap from 8.1% to 17.1%.

For all their potential, Web-enabled call centers come with their share of challenges. According to Forrester's survey, the major inhibitors to implementing to a Web-based call-center strategy include integration, staffing and training, maintaining service quality, business risks, and infrastructure upgrades. To help with that last challenge, AT&T, Qwest Communications, and WorldCom are working on network-based call-center services that will provide the functionality of sophisticated call-center equipment such as automatic call distributors and voice-response units, without the need to buy the gear and related integrated communications software.

Continental Airlines knows all about integration challenges as it works to Web-enable its five call centers, staffed with 3,500 full-time equivalent agents. Continental is overhauling its customer-support user interface and integrating its customer database systems, its OnePass frequent-flier system, and a new E-mail management system from Brightware Inc. into what the airline calls its EZR reservation system. Until now, Continental has had separate customer databases for its traditional reservation system and for those reservations made on the Web, and agents have had no way to transfer customer data to coworkers at other centers, Goodwin says. Continental is also three-quarters through the integration of its computer-telephony technology from Davox Corp. across all five of its call centers.

About two years ago, Goodwin explains, Continental decided to outsource its online-booking customer services and sales as an interim step in its call-center upgrade. As recently as last month, if an online customer called the wrong toll-free number, the agent who answered the call wouldn't be able to see that customer's information. With the integrated in-house booking system, which includes customer information from telephone sales and sales closed online, there will be fewer systems for the company to maintain, as well as improved customer service through the elimination of what Goodwin calls "agent confusion."

Larry Goodwin Photo by Burke Uzzle To date, Goodwin estimates, Continental has cut by 10% the time agents spend on the phone with customers who call for sales or support after first having used Continental.com. "Spread that [time savings] over 65 million calls, and it gets to be a fairly large number," he says. "And it's all attributed to new technology," such as the flight-search capability on the company's home page and its new flight-status notification system, which sends updated flight information to customers' pagers, text-ready mobile phones, or E-mail in-boxes.

After Continental navigates through its current integration projects, expected to be completed in about a year, the airline has several other projects to start on such as instant chat and voice-over-IP, which Goodwin hopes will help the company soar to even higher levels of customer service and cost savings.

When he gets to those projects, Goodwin may want to consult with IBM.com, which last May implemented technologies such as Web call-back and instant text chat to build up the efficiencies of the site. "The No. 1 priority was to make it as easy as possible for customers to contact us," says Fred Fassman, VP of IBM.com centers. IBM.com's 6,500 call-center agents handle an average of 95 sales calls and 38 service calls every minute.