3 Key Uses of Data to Optimise the Performance of the Voice Channel

Patrice Orenes-Lerma of Diabolocom shares three methods of using data to improve contact centre conversations on the voice channel.

Everyone agrees that data is an essential vehicle to improve customer experience. But what data are we talking about exactly and, in concrete terms, what does this mean for a contact centre?

By giving the floor to AG2R LA MONDIALE and Domiserve, during the round table organised by Diabolocom at the recent Stratégie Clients Exhibition in Paris, we were able to highlight three main areas in which customer and operational data can be used to improve interactions in the voice channel. These are highlighted below

1. Data to Personalise Customer Service

When we talk about personalised service in the voice channel, we automatically think of the use of the data that every company has on its customers and which, provided with an intelligent interaction management system, makes it possible to instantly identify a customer by their phone number.

When the company’s CRM is integrated with the incoming call management system, the caller’s number is recognised and the customer record automatically opens in the phone agent’s work interface.

The latter then knows who they are dealing with and can personalise their welcome and how they conduct the conversation. This is the ideal configuration, but it requires:

1. The CRM (or other third-party system) and the call management solution to communicate
2. The caller to already be known, which is obviously not always the case, or never has been in some activities

For example, Domiserve, which manages personal services on behalf of major clients (insurance, departmental advice, etc.), does not generally know callers and cannot therefore recognise them by their number.

Working under a white label, this La Banque Postale Group company has set up dedicated telephone numbers with Diabolocom for each of its customers.

As Franck Latrasse, Deputy Director of Operations at Domiserve, explains: “The telephone number by which the call arrives allows advisors to present themselves on behalf of the brand they represent. This data – the phone number called – allows us to offer a first-level of personalisation. It is also used to adapt, in near real-time, the number of advisors assigned to each issue, knowing that our advisors are multi-skilled.”

2. Data for Intelligent Automation

At AG2R LA MONDIALE, data is used to better understand their customers and their uses in order to set up automated processing services for certain categories of requests in the voice channel.

Voice remains paramount: out of 100 interactions, 80 are calls and we are confronted with peaks in calls and quality of service requirements.

“Automation allows us to control these two dimensions,” says Tanguy Vincent, Head of Innovation, Customer Experience & Digital Solutions.

“This is what we have done, for example, for the reissue of third-party payment cards: this operation can be done entirely by the voice of the customer, without the intervention of an advisor. It is extremely easy to implement with the IVR options of the Diabolocom solution.”

Automating for AG2R LA MONDIALE is also the possibility of moving from unstructured data to more easily and more widely usable structured data. From the moment you recover structured data via an automated process, you can expose it to RPA (Robotic Process Automation) solutions which, by factually reproducing the steps taken by the consultants, free them from repetitive tasks.

With his experience in the deployment of automated voice services, Tanguy Vincent insists on two points:

• Automated scenarios must be monitored, not necessarily in real time, but on a regular basis, to understand whether customers use them, how they use them and why they do not use them if they don’t. The analysis of the data generated by the telephony solution and other systems allows us to know if the services we imagine meet customer usage.
• Always give the customer the opportunity to talk to an advisor. When we offer automation, it should never be a dead end for the caller. Our scenarios always offer the possibility of contacting an advisor and/or being called back. We believe that if our customers do not use our automatic solutions, it is up to us to make the effort to contact them again. With Diabolocom, these reminder requests are automatically programmed.

This programmed callback feature also allows the “hot flow ” of incoming calls to be transformed into a “call stock ” that can be processed by advisors outside rush periods.

Domiserve uses these callback functions of the Diabolocom solution a little differently: “During peaks, people who want to be recalled automatically feed an outgoing call campaign that is launched when advisors are available.”

“We then track the number of people contacted and the follow-up given to the exchanges, as we do for a traditional outbound call campaign.” 

3. Data to Manage Teams and Performance

The ability of the Diabolocom solution to provide real-time operational data and tailor-made reporting was a decisive choice criterion for Franck Latrasse.

Franck: “This access to data is very important and even fundamental since our clients impose a certain number of quantitative and qualitative objectives to be met: dropout rates, service level, call quality, etc.”

“When we looked for an interaction management solution, it had to meet this need for tailor-made follow-up, with personalised reports for each of our clients.”

Another very interesting aspect of Diabolocom, says Franck “is that wallboards display the important indicators for each of our clients in real time. This way, phone agents know where they stand on each of the commitments and can see if there are any calls waiting, how long they have been waiting, etc. These customised wallboards help supervisors a lot in terms of animation.

Tanguy Vincent also uses Diabolocom’s reporting capabilities to manage and improve business processes, and particularly appreciates being autonomous with regard to IT teams for the extraction of user data.

This is confirmed by Franck Latrasse: “IT teams no longer intervene at all on data extraction, nor on the operational evolutions of the tool. When we have questions, we interact directly with Diabolocom support, without going through IT.” 

Author: Robyn Coppell