Back to the Future

By Gerry Barber, Corporate Officer CIAC

Bio: Gerry is a 25 + year veteran of the call center industry and a board member and corporate officer of CIAC, the certifying body for the call center industry.

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Back to the Future – The Universal eAgent Controversy

The idea of universal agents is certainly not a new debate just because we are facing the dynamics of a multi-channel contact world and the talk of e-agents.

Let’s look at some history.

While many of you who read the pages of this industry publication may not have been managing a sales/service environment (back before they were called “call centers”), I hope this jogs some profound thought as you struggle with decisions related to deployment of your human assets as e-agents.

The argument and the question go back far.  In the late seventies and early eighties the question was focused on separate “data entry” personnel versus “telephone order-taking”. This was the case in many direct mail companies of that era. It didn’t make sense to write down information on paper and send it to another department for entry.  So, forever more on-line entry at the point of call was born.

Think about it - this seems like a no brainer today. But at the time here is some of the debate that was happening:

The sales supervisor said “We have agents who can’t type”.  The data processing supervisor said “we have data entry people who can’t handle telephone calls”. Sound familiar?  The same applied to the conversion of the customer service correspondence departments.

As we know today, it was the right thing to do.  Companies began providing  their personnel keyboard typing skill training and smile training. They deployed ACDs to deliver calls to the first available agent. The agents became more valuable.

I guess at this point you are thinking that I am pro universal eAgents….well, don’t jump to conclusions just yet!  Read on…

In the mid to late 1980’s came the cry for specialization to reduce errors and problems. Customers complained that all of these folks, yet efficient, didn’t know enough about the breath and depth of the product lines?  You guessed it…business focused on specialized groups as ACD systems got smarter.

Again at this stage and time it was generally the right thing to do for many. So we moved away from universal and turned to specialization.

Now, maybe I’m not pro universal eAgent after all, hum….
 
We specialized and specialized and specialized, we geographized (I made that word up) and all that.  Then as the 1990’s began it was evident that all this specialization was problematic. The customers were complaining about long wait times and leaving for greener pastures;, the bean counters complained about high contact center costs. Can you guess what happened next?

Call center managers were scrambling to get all their agents trained and able to take any call.  IVRS were enlisted to take the bulk of the routine questions and transactions, whiich only made things worst and better all at the same time.

So you’re back to thinking that I’m for the universal e-agent . Not so fast!!!!

Well, all this led to service levels improving and marketers looking for greater share of wallet. So again,call center managers were asked to make another transition.  Let’s have the inbound world make outbound calls…. there was mild success at best with blending.

Ok, so now you think this guy is dazed and confused!

 Ok I’ll fess up….I am neither for nor against the universal e-agent. My position is that this subject should not even touch the lips of call center professionals….at least not in the manner “to universal e-agent or not to universal e-agent”.

The universal e-agent is a myth. Let me explain.  For the larger call center community it is rare when one can be all things to all people, all the time.  That said, there are many talented agents employed in our companies.  Given this, my recommendation is that each company must consider and weight their respective business and customer-interfacing strategies for opportunities to effectively engage the talents of people to their fullest potential. This should be done to provide differentiating services at the best possible costs.   This should be the driver in making decisions regarding the deployment of your organization’s valuable human asset.  All said, this is  my belief and this is how I will approach managing call center operations.

Points to Ponder...

• Assumption – 25-30% of your Agents today can achieve universal eAgent status with little or no training beyond business writing review. If we, as call center managers are as good as we say we are regarding hiring good people then we should have at least this percentage able to adapt to multi-tasking events.
• Assumption – Like contacts have a better chance of eAgents doing universal work i.e. sales with sales, tech calls by universal tech eAgents (but even there most must take a tiered approach)
• FACT – Not even IVRS can be all things to all people, neither can live eAgents as talented as they are.
• Assumption – It would be a mistake to count on multiple CHATS being handled by one person on a frequent basis. If you thought burnout happened before, just wait!
• FACT – having universal eAgents doesn’t guarantee greater productivity or cost savings.
• FACT – Universal eAgent status should be a career advancement opportunity and be paid for the extent of knowledge and multi-tasking they do.
• FACT–  We should work to improve self service and its use. Humans should only be involved if requested.
• FACT–  A large Call Center staffing company reports that they have seen very few centers embrace the universal eAgent in the multimedia world.
• Assumption – Some of the above might be due to lack of smart eCRM systems in place at this time.
• Assumption – New Technologies that process Multi-channel contacts have the ability to write specific business routing rules for all media thus possibly making the need for the all encompassing universal eAgent a non event.
• Assumption – Don’t get hung up on email processing long term as it will go the way of snail mail as we get closer to web VOIP...
• Assumption – We’ll next be talking about the Universal vAgents and should all eAgents be video based.