A Predictive Dialling Solution
To provide an overview of Predictive Dialling, we focussed on
an actual South African implementation and will briefly explore
the justification for implementing the system and the benefits
realised after the implementation.
The first stage in the justification of a Predictive Dialler
was to ascertain why it should have been considered
in the first place!
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Multi-Connect solution consultants undertook
a detailed survey of the customer’s outbound
operation.
The pie chart opposite shows the disposition
of the agent initiated, outbound calls as determined
in the survey.
The information gathered was typical of a
non-automated outbound dialling environment in
South Africa and other countries
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The Agents1 were
using a mainframe computer based collections system and
were averaging 11 customer calls per hour.
- When the outbound campaign involved customers in
rural areas this was as low as 6 per hour.
- Of the 11 calls made per hour, over 50% were
being made to numbers which were busy, not
answered, invalid or faulty.
The actual processes followed by an agent during
the calling operation were as follows:
- The agent initially prepared to make the call
by accessing a computer based list.
- The Agent then dialled the number.
- The phone rang
- In the case of an answered
call, the Agent would talk to the
Customer, this could be the correct party
(called a Right Party Contact) or another
person (Wrong Party Contact).
This was classified as "productive"
time, i.e. when the Agent was actually doing what
they are being paid to do - talking to customers.
At the end of the call, the Agent completed the
appropriate updates to the host systems in what
we call a Wrap-up.
Productive time was logged from the instant
the Agent started talking to the customer until
the end of the Wrap-up process.
- In the case that the call was unanswered,
busy or invalid, the Agent would complete the
Wrap-up and schedule the call for some follow
up action.
These calls were totally non-productive, in
addition it was found that the call-backs never
happened on the same day or even during the same
week or month in some cases.
- In addition there were calls where the Agent
left a message for the customer to call back.
The Agents were spending a relatively small percentage
of their time in actually doing what they are paid to do
- i.e. talking to customers, hence real productivity
(not time at their desks) was very low.
These Agents were only productive for 18 minutes and
20 seconds an hour, i.e. 31% of their time at their desks
This is a very common situation with 25-35% productivity
being the norm in South African Call Centres.
Automating The Operation
The operation was improved using the Aspect Unison
Predictive Dialler to improve the delivery of calls to
the Call Centre Agents.
- Unison initiates the customer calls automatically
from a list provided from their main collections system
nightly (described below), calls are initiated without
any Agent or Supervisor interaction.
- As soon as a call is answered, it is switched through
to a waiting Agent.
- Using the Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
capabilities of Unison, the Agent is simultaneously
informed of who is on the line, the reason for calling
and summary account details; this is achieved with a
dynamic "pop-up" screen on the workstation.
- Unison initiates a request to the Collections System
to provide the detailed customer account for the customer
on the line.
- The Agent handles the call with the customer in
exactly the same way they previously did.
- On call completion, the Agent is immediately placed
into Wrap-Up mode to complete the call with a dedicated
Wrap Up screen.
- Before the current call is completed, Unison has predicted
when to launch the next call for the Agent.
A sophisticated software process (dialling algorithm) is working
in the background, evaluating how many calls are answered, how many
are busy, how long they take to be answered, how long the agents are
taking on their calls etc. and determining when to launch the next
call(s) to maintain optimum Agent productivity.
Interfacing To The Host For Calling Data.
The diagram below shows the process used to provide the customer
information from the Host Mainframe to Unison using the customer’s
LAN (and WAN) as the transport layer between the host system and
Unison.
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The data for Unison is transferred nightly from
the host using a scheduled data transfer (the host
shown could of course be a Client/Server, Database etc.)
On receiving the download, Unison automatically
segments the data into categories defined by the
business, doing this allows Unison to organise the
data into logical groups as in the example shown.
The Unison Supervisors build these Call Tables
into campaigns which are used by the Agents during
the dialling process.
These campaigns are all managed uniquely,
are reported on separately and all co-exist on
the same platform at the same time.
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Supervisors have access to their own campaigns for management
and reporting, may monitor and coach their own agents,
but are restricted from accessing other supervisor’s campaigns,
agents and reports.
The call centre manager has a totally unrestricted
view of all agents and campaigns.
Aspect Unison Operation
The diagram below shows the Unison interconnections
to Telkom and the customer infrastructure, the process
employed by the Agents to access Unison and to handle
the calls is described below:
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At the start of their session, the agents log
onto their normal system application, and in addition
log onto the Unison system
During this process the Agent enters their PABX
extension number, Unison then dials the extension
and establishes the voice path for the Agent via
the PABX.
With agents logged on and available, Unison
is able to start dialling customers using the
information contained in the campaign described
above.
As soon as a call is answered, Unison switches
the call to a waiting agent and "pops" the agent
screen with the called party details from the
data received in the download.
The desktop integration provided by Unison accesses
the Host system and presents the agent with the host
based data for the caller who is on the line.
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The Aspect Software Unison solution provided the following advantages:
- Unison makes use of the existing PBX/ACD infrastructure
to connect to the Agents, and does not require CTI
or other upgrades to the PABX2
or ACD systems.
Agents made use of their normal
PABX extensions3 and LAN
based workstations, no upgrades to the PABX/ACD or special
phone instruments were required.
- Unison connects directly to Telkom using ISDN links,
saving additional ports (and costs) which would have been
required if the system had been configured "behind the switch".
This direct ISDN connection to Telkom provides cost and performance
benefits and allows use of the detailed ISDN messaging to inform the
users what is wrong with bad numbers4
, allowing better follow up action when tracing.
Direct connection to Telkom Network removes the
"dialling load" from the PABX allowing
lower specification units to provide agent audio.
- Using the existing infrastructure, anybody
(suitably authorised) in the organisation can be
a "Unison Agent", allowing the flexibility
of free seating.
- Unison is licensed on the basis of the number of
agents concurrent on the system at any one time,
allowing flexibility in a free-seating environment to
allow the agent to be anywhere in the organisation where
voice and data connectivity is available.
Campaign Options
This diagram below shows some of the campaign options
in use by the customer; we have already described the
simultaneous voice and data delivery in Predictive
Dialling mode, certainly the most efficient method from
an operational point of view.
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However, certain campaigns are better served
by allowing the Agent to Preview the
information before dialling. Certainly less
efficient from a volume perspective, but this
option suited certain of the business needs
better.
The non-dial campaign is used to update bad
numbers which were detected previously. Numbers
are updated on the mainframe using
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Unison and the information provided by Telkom.
Unison acts as the trigger to access the customer
record on the host, uses the ISDN Result Code to
identify why the dial operation failed and allows
the Agent to update the record. The system could
then dial the customer, however, the business has
determined that the optimum method is to update
the Host and allow the updated record to come down
in the next download the following day for further
action.
Other options available to the business allow
Unison to dial the updated number immediately with
the same agent, dial and allocate the call to any
agent or to add the number in a new campaign for
dedicated attention.
- Unison is able to support whatever the
desired mode of operation the business requires.
This means that strategies can be implemented
rapidly and modified during operation to react
immediately to business priorities and customer
needs.
- Unison does this all on the same platform.
Any operational campaign can run in whatever
manner is determined by the supervisor without
any restrictions, clashes or lack of resources.
Changes take immediate effect.
Campaign Management
Supervisors are only able to view and manage
campaigns5 which they
are authorised for.
Managers are given the authority to view the groups
under their supervision - but not other groups.
Thus each division, department or group on Unison
operates as if they own the system in its entirety,
this allows a single system to support the multiple
business groups of the user.
Agents now do what they are paid to do - they
talk to people.
Agent productivity figures of over 90% are achieved
on a regular basis.
Agent productivity increases of over 200% have
been achieved.
Benefits Of The Aspect Unison Implementation
The Customer’s agents were averaging 18 minutes
and 36 seconds of productive work in the manual
outbound operation described above.
Unison increased the productivity of the same agents,
with the same database, with the same back-end systems
to an average of 54 minutes and 30 seconds an hour only
six weeks after installation of the system.
The agent productivity (based on time spent talking
to customers) rose from the original 31% to 91%.
Collections rose to 370%6
of their previous level, these achievements were made with:
- Normal Telkom infrastructure.
- No changes to the Host system application software.
A simple daily extract of the customers to contact is
transferred to Unison; this was the only change to the
Host Collections System.
- No changes were made to the Agent operation, apart
from Unison placing the call and additional Wrap-up
information.
- Agents only receive live customer contacts.
- Unison prevented all Busy Numbers from reaching
the Agent.
Busies are automatically re-dialled, 27
minutes later, when a live contact
is likely.
- Unison prevented all No Answers from reaching the Agent.
No Answers are automatically re-dialled, 20 minutes later.
- Bad numbers (or equipment faults) detected by Unison,
are not delivered to the Agents.
These numbers are built into a dedicated campaign
(complete with the reported Telkom reason for the
call not being placed) to allow for tracing or other
follow up action by a dedicated agent group.
- Unison is instructed to automatically dial
alternate numbers e.g. if no contact is made on
the Business number the cell Number and then the
Home number will be tried, supervisors have full
control over the order in which numbers are dialled.
- The time an Agent spends waiting for a phone to be
answered has been eliminated.
- Calls are initiated automatically to obtain optimum agent
efficiency without over pressurising the agents, in reality
their work is more rewarding and less frustrating as they
no longer have busies, no answers and bad numbers to handle.
- Agents are moved from non-productive campaigns to more
productive campaigns under supervisor control, campaigns are
flowed from one to the next.
This customer achieved a Return on Investment, based on staff
savings, within 7 months of installing the system.
This dropped to nearly 4 months due to the reduction in the
bad debt portion of their loan book and the resulting financial
gains.
1 We use the term Agents in this
document as an abbreviation for Call Centre Agents, other
terms include Customer Service Representative.
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2 Although a single
"Switch" is shown in the diagram for simplicity, the
customer actually had multiple PABXs and an ACD all of which
were connected to the Aspect system.Back
3 Alternately Unison could have
provided dedicated outbound agent connections using headsets
with the agents being directly connected to the
Unison system.Back
4 The full set of 42 ISDN Result
Codes are used by Unison allowing identification of
"insufficient digits", "invalid trunk code"
and other meaningful explanations of why a particular number
was faulty.Back
5 The Real Time Management and
Reporting section in this document shows some of the facilities
provided to manage the operation and the staff employed.
Back
6 The additional management
tools and reporting also contributed to the raised efficiency.
Back
7 Parameters such as time between
re-dialling, numbers of attempts etc. are all configurable by
a suitably authorised supervisor or manager, each category of
call (Busy, No Answer, Bad Number etc.) may be individually
defined.Back
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