New World of Customer ExpectationsMichael Sirohi, Bluewolf Practice Director: Customer CareKen Osborn, Five9 Vice President of Marketing
The AgileEnterprise
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Jerry Gregoire, the CIO of Dell Computers,
said it best “Customer Service is the next
competitive battleground.” We have entered
the era of the customer. Today, providing
customers with outstanding customer service
is essential to building loyal customers and
a long lasting brand. Social media, and other
cutting edge communications, have a place
in any company’s customer strategy, but
the front-line of every company’s service
organization remains the telephone, and the
customer service agent. It also remains one of
the largest operational cost areas.
In this new battleground, companies need to
provide customer service that surpasses the
competition. They need to realign their culture
and technology in order to drive the maximum
value out of their investments (making
employees more productive, and extending
current capital expenditures to capture the
highest value).
In this paper we discuss:
The business benefits of migrating and
integrating your telephony and CRM
solutions in the cloud
How cloud technologies have enabled the
seamless integration between telephony
and CRM
Highlight key considerations when moving
your service operations to the cloud
Provide real-world examples of customers
achieving results
telephony & crm: a cloud-based match
More revenue, higher quality, greater
speed—all are watchwords in today’s
customer-facing contact center industry,
along with tougher service level agreements
and steadily increasing customer expectations.
Contact centers and other customer-facing
organizations are seeking answers to these
challenges from technology. Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) solutions
are providing more insight into customer
behavior and guidance for specific interactions.
Telephony solutions are allowing more
sophisticated routing and control of
customer interactions.
The old world of on-premise legacy
technologies —CRM, call distributors,
autodialers, Computer Telephony Integration
(CTI), Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems
and more—have grown far too complex and
unmanageable, making it impossible to achieve
the level of transparency and responsiveness
demanded by today’s customers.
Organizations, of every size and across every
industry, are reducing their dependence on
premise-based solutions such as Siebel’s
CRM and SFA solutions and shifting in huge
numbers to cloud-based counterparts such
as salesforce.com. They are also moving their
telephony functions out of premise-based,
licensed software solutions and costly private
data centers into SaaS solutions designed for
and living in the cloud.
Increased Importance in the Social EraCustomers today are expanding
their use of social networks as a
means of communication, and
self-service is emerging as a
primary mode for resolving issues.
This trend has only strengthened
the importance of a strong and
central CRM. The wide use of
online knowledge repositories and
customer portals have enabled
customers to resolve many low
level customer interactions
themselves. This means that the
support interactions managed
through telephony are now the
most complex since customers
have exhausted efforts at
resolving their issue themselves.
The AgileEnterprise
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The advantages? Lower costs, improved agility,
greater reliability, and flexibility – or the ability
to scale rapidly. Each of these are critical
in an industry where shifting markets and
opportunities demand rapid change.
why the dependency between telephony and crm
The internal discussion happening in leading
organizations today is changing - from
measuring the “costs to cover” customers,
to a new discussion around the “cost of
servicing” customers. Improving customer
satisfaction and the quality of every interaction
is seen as a critical driver for growth. Cloud-
based technologies offer advantages and
opportunities toward developing more
sophisticated and responsive business
processes aimed at improving revenue
and customer satisfaction. But critical to
the success of these initiatives is the tight
integration between telephony and CRM.
CRM systems such as Salesforce are providing
a great deal of information and guidance to
make every customer interaction successful.
But this information is not fully realized,
if the person leveraging the information is
not capable of applying this guidance to
the customer interaction. IVR, VRU, and CTI
capabilities ensure that the customer is routed
to the correct queue or person to manage the
interaction. The right business process along
with telephony and CRM integration, ensures
the right employee, at the right time, equipped
with the right information, can make each
customer interaction a success.
the cloud difference: distinct business advantages
The financial and operational benefits of
moving to the cloud are extensive.
Hardware and software investments are
minimal if needed at all. No up-front
capital investment is required—for servers
or other equipment (telecom switches,
handsets)— and ongoing monthly expenses
are much easier to forecast.
Flexibility is built in. It’s much easier to
add or subtract seat licenses rather than
change the capacity of premise-based
hardware and software, so costs can
be kept to a minimum as business
needs fluctuate.
Speed of innovation. By eliminating
the delays associated with internally
managed systems, contact centers can
cost-effectively add functionality, boost
capacity, change processes, and tap new
or changed data sources precisely when
they need to.
Speed of deployment. Cloud-based CTI
lets a business deploy agents or even
establish new contact centers with
unprecedented speed.
Flexible agents, located anywhere. VOIP
technology means agents can be located
anywhere in the world—domestically,
offshore, or even in their homes creating
an “on-demand” workforce.
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Enhancements and upgrades occur
seamlessly. New software releases
are simply pushed to the cloud-based
production environment with no
business disruption whatsoever—and
usually no involvement from an
enterprise’s own IT unit.
The result? Maximum agent productivity,
lower costs, and greater ability to seize
market opportunities.
integrating cti with your crm system
Another distinct advantage is the ease
of integrating cloud-based CTI and CRM
solutions. Links between the two platforms
are provided out of the gate (i.e. Salesforce) or
can usually be quickly and easily customized
and configured, strengthening both solutions.
With customer, call and contact information
flowing freely both directions, calls are more
easily routed to the right agent, while agents
can provide better-informed service with more
customer information at hand.
Agility as a key for success. The benefits of
making this move to the cloud are compelling,
but the target platform must be selected
with an eye toward ongoing agility. Even the
move itself must be done in lockstep with
changes in the business. This requires an agile
implementation approach designed to leverage
technology implementation best practices and
solve your business problems incrementally.
The result? Tangible results with minimal
project risk. By addressing business challenges
at the outcome of the project, cloud transition
teams can minimize time-to-value.
The following figure shows that cloud migration eventually results in better performance across the broader (and more significant) business metrics: customer satisfaction and cost of support.
MEASURABLE BENEFITS: Cloud migration results in direct benefits, customer satisfaction and cost of support.
ROI on Cloud Migration
ABERDEEN INSIGHTS: TECHNOLOGY
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Graphical User Interface for Building IVR and ACD Scripts
Other
Sales
Service
Support
Collect’s
No Match
Other
Sales
Service
Support
Collect’s
No Match
IF
ELSE
IF
ELSE
Speed of deployment is driven by the Five9 platform’s configuration interfaces. The Five9 visual call routing
designer enables call center administrators to design their call flows via an intuitive configuration tool. In
addition, out-of-the-box integrations to CRM platforms such as Salesforce accelerate the deployment process.
success story: national health insurance company
Rapid Deployment With Salesforce Integration Fuels Successful Launch Of New B2C Telesales Team The Challenge
When a large, nationwide health insurance
firm began preparing to launch a new product
line—one in which health insurance would be
marketed directly to consumers—it planned a
new telesales team to reach out to prospects.
Agents would:
Help consumers complete a lengthy
healthcare application via phone—a
process that could take as long as
two hours
Capture and retrieve detailed healthcare
information while also tracking information
about the call itself
Field support calls from healthcare plan
applicants (included Inbound agents—
blended agents, and eventually off-hours
agents handed off to outsourced contact
center service providers)
Data security is a key issue in the healthcare
space due to HIPAA and other regulatory
requirements. All solution components would
need to be configurable to manage data access
on a role and individual basis.
The Solution
Early on, the team identified Salesforce as a
key technology component, for managing both
lead and collected healthcare information.
Given the need for customized integration
among contact center technology, Salesforce,
and three other back-end applications, the
team engaged with Bluewolf to help select and
assemble all the components. Their marching
orders: move quickly.
The solution needed to combine call data
from IVR and other telephony applications
with lead information for Salesforce to create
customized prompting screens (known as
screen pops). These screens would guide
agents through the long, complex calls. All the
information collected would need to feed back
into Salesforce.
For the contact center functionality, the team
chose to implement the cloud-based, virtual
contact center solution from Five9, for a
number of reasons:
Cost of Ownership: Total cost of ownership,
including hardware, software, support and
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Choosing a Cloud-based CTI Solution: Key Considerations Cloud-based CTI solutions can deliver on their promise of lower costs and increased agility
when they offer certain attributes. When deliberating solutions consider the importance of
some of these factors into your decision process:
Comprehensive Functionality/Flexibility: Consider the need for components that manage
both inbound and outbound calling. Blending agent workload and the ability to quickly scale
a team can be a key component.
Extensibility and APIs/Integration: Speed and ease of integration with a strong central CRM
is critical, but there are also many other applications that may benefit from integration.
Consider the overall platform, and the ability to extend and customize through open APIs.
Reporting and Visibility: Reporting and analytics are also critical. A solid platform will sport
a full library of pre-configured reports. Consider the ability to facilitate bringing CTI data into
external reporting or analysis applications, and the ability for your organization to optimize
performance through improved visibility.
other factors—would be lower than with
premise-based solutions.
Time to Market: Five9’s built-in, easily
configured SFDC integration would limit
complexity, enabling the solution to be
in place much sooner than premise-
based technology.
Ease of Integration: Other integrations
could be readily achieved with Five9’s open,
standards-based APIs.
Flexibility: Later, when outsourced
providers took on after-hours and overload
blended support, Five9’s agent-anywhere
capability and easily configured security
smoothed the way.
The combined Five9 and Bluewolf team also
identified an additional component deemed
ideal for generating and maintaining the long,
complex scripts needed by the agents: a
graphical scripting solution called Informavores
(since acquired by salesforce.com). This
tool would integrate with the contact
center technology.
The Results
As a result of the deployment, the insurance
firm was able to roll out its solution very
quickly, and establish a consistent, scalable
solution, thanks to dedicated integration work
by Bluewolf, and easy-to-implement Five9
contact center software.
Starting with a small telesales team, the
solution quickly ramped to more than 260
agents, with an additional 40-60 agents at
outsourced service providers.
Lead generation and conversion rate
both improved —boosting the return on
investment and helping the new product
line enjoy dramatic success.
Productivity & ease of use: The new solution
reduced the number of agent applications
from nine different systems down to a
single application and desktop.
And finally, this organization had been routing
any overflow calls during the day to their
outsourcers. Because of the increased agent
productivity, the company was able to manage
all call volumes during work hours, resulting in
significant monthly savings.
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success story: media
Virtual Contact Center And Record-Breaking Blizzard Trigger At-Home Agent Model For News Industry Help Desk The Challenge
A centralized, inbound help desk team was
charged with assisting thousands of individuals
in the creation and use of key news assets.
They were struggling with their current system
due to key limitations, including:
Agents were unable to take advantage of
at-home agent coverage, due to limitations
of the premise-based call center platform.
The team wanted to boost customer
service by enhancing self-service (IVR)
functionality and enabling agents to
retrieve relevant information more quickly
and completely.
Though key information was managed by and
stored within Salesforce, linking the premise-
based call center technology with Salesforce
promised to be a long, difficult, and expensive
proposition. The company selected Bluewolf
to help them engage and transition to a
new platform.
The Solution
Bluewolf identified the cloud-based, virtual
contact center platform from Five9 as an
answer to both company challenges.
Five9’s powerful, pre-built, and highly
configurable integration with Salesforce meant
dramatically improved control over Salesforce-
held information, and much faster, more cost-
effective integration between Salesforce and
the cloud-based IVR solution.
Now, when a client calls the help desk,
the IVR-Salesforce integration—quickly
and easily customized by Bluewolf—
establishes or identifies a case, retrieves
relevant case information from the system,
and presents the agent with combined call
and case information.
The Results
Thanks to easy, less costly integration of the
Five9 and salesforce.com platforms—together
with Bluewolf’s expertise in working with
and customizing Salesforce-based solutions—
the help desk delivers faster, more
effective service.
Another key benefit—the ability for agents
to work remotely- surfaced just two days
after the solution was implemented when a
significant snowstorm shut down the help
desk’s home city. Agents could not get to the
call center, but because they had implemented
the cloud-based contact center software, they
could use the complete new solution from
their homes.
Lower costs: Costly premise-based
contact center software and the resources
to support it were both eliminated.
Flexibility: Ability for agents to work
anytime, anywhere. Since launch, the
customer has transitioned to a more
effective and less costly at-home staffing
model for off-hours work.
Most importantly, the organization has
gained all the advantages of cloud-based
contact center software—lower costs, regular,
effortless upgrades, and easier integration—
while still enjoying the benefits of customized
software where needed.
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choosing the right partner
Companies looking to leverage cloud based
solutions to reap the benefits discussed in
this paper should understand that success
rests upon not only selecting the right
technology, but also right partner to help
transform your organization. Business process
expertise and technical competence play a
important role, but of equal importance is
the cultural fit with an organization. When
selecting a consulting partner be sure that
partner has a proven process to help you
establish your implementation requirements,
time-lines, and cost upfront. Also, look
for a proactive approach that identifies
behavioral and organizational factors that
may impact adoption. In the end, a true
partner will listen carefully and have the
expertise to build a solution that maps to your
unique organizational challenges and that
employees will actually use. Only then will your
organization have the foundation to provide the
level of customer service needed
to compete, and win, in this new customer
driven era.
about five9
Five9 is the leading global provider of cloud-
based call center software for Sales, Marketing
and Support. The award-winning Five9
Virtual Call Center and Predictive Dialer serve
customers of all sizes on five continents.
Customers profit from Five9’s reliable, robust
functionality that provides the best technology,
improves agent productivity, and delivers
business flexibility.
about bluewolf
We make enterprises agile, and unite IT and the
business under one mission - Innovation. As
a global agile consultancy, Bluewolf provides
services across the customer life cycle, IT
resourcing, managed services and training.
Trusted by businesses across diverse industries,
Bluewolf is translating today’s unique
business environment into opportunities for
growth. With Bluewolf, businesses are able to
deliver results that benefit the customer, the
workforce, and the bottom line.