Sabio research identifies seven key technologies for effective First Contact Resolution

First Call Resolution or First Contact Resolution? Sabio recommends you clearly define your FCR for both the customer and the organisation

LONDON – 11 July, 2007– Sabio, the innovative contact centre services and solutions company, has highlighted what it believes are the seven key technologies that can help organisations implement an effective First Contact Resolution (FCR) strategy to improve overall customer service levels. However, before putting an FCR initiative into place, Sabio recommends that Customer Service Managers need to clearly define their own FCR definition, and set targets that are realistic from both a customer and an organisational perspective.

According to Sabio Director, Adam Faulkner: “there are some real inconsistencies in the definition and measurement of FCR, not least in terms of what it actually stands for: is it First Call Resolution or First Contact Resolution? Also, how do we define resolution, are we doing it for organisational or customer benefits, and who will actually do the measurement – will it be self-measurement by agents, or should organisations actually let the customer decide whether their issue has been resolved effectively?

“We believe it makes much more sense for FCR to represent a customer’s first contact, whether it’s by phone, e-mail, chat or the Web, and we’re finding that best practice organisations are treating all their different customer interactions with the same integrity,” he continued. “Technology clearly has a key role to play in supporting this, and while there isn’t a simple FCR technology fix, there are contact centre systems and applications that can be intelligently integrated and deployed to give organisations a better chance of resolving customer issues on the first interaction.”

Effective First Contact Resolution also emphasises that organisations need to offer a personalised, consistent and integrated service across all channels. A customer’s engagement with an organisation can take them across many channels – simply booking an airline ticket might involve the internet, voice, e-mail and face-to-face service at different points of the transaction. Adam Faulkner suggests that businesses should “aim to ensure that their service is personalised and consistent across the entire transaction irrespective of the channel,” and recommends seven technologies that can help achieve this:

1. Workforce Optimisation – an integrated WFO approach is essential for effective First Contact Resolution. Interaction Recording and Quality Monitoring mean you can measure the leading and lagging indications that are important to FCR, identify non-adherence, and schedule relevant eLearning where necessary. Workforce Management and Performance Monitoring can help ensure that contact centres are staffed with the right number of correctly-skilled agents, while WFO also embraces two key emerging technologies – Speech Analytics and Customer Feedback – that provide a real time overview of performance from a customer perspective
2. Speech Analytics – the latest phonetics-based and large vocabulary speech analytics tools now offer a cost-effective way to listen to every single customer call and pick out key words and phrases to identify unhappy customers who are likely to churn. By integrating speech analytics with WFO, organisations can now get these problem calls straight to the win-back team for immediate resolution
3. Customer Feedback – by capturing the voice of the customer and using automated speech survey techniques to deliver real time feedback, organisations can quickly identify customers with problems and immediately alert retention teams to resolve the issue
4. Streamlined Agent Desktops – composite, role-specific agent desktops can help agents access the information they need to handle calls quickly, with a focus on the customer rather than the screens in front of them. It also gives way to more time spent training agents on resolving customer queries than using the different applications.
5. Blended multi-channel support – to enable First Contact Resolution organisations need to take advantage of the latest Customer Interaction Management systems that combine with a streamlined agent desktop to create a true single view of each customer. A multi-channel approach ensures consistency across channels and that contacts are prioritised and routed in the same way
6. When coupled with Intelligent Call Routing, organisations can identify an interaction when it first comes in – whether it’s a voice call, an email, a self-service transaction, a webchat or an SMS - and make sure that it is routed to an available agent with the right skillset
7. Voice Self-Service – using the latest IVR and speech technologies along with a caller-focused design approach means that organisations can implement solutions that can resolve customer queries quickly and efficiently