What VoIP Can Mean to You

Before the end of this decade, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is expected to become the dominant business telephony model. This shift will impact businesses of all types and sizes--small and large, domestic and international--by reducing telecommunications costs and leveraging the flexibility of IP recording to increase workforce productivity, impact training, support dispute resolution, and improve service quality. As companies continue to focus on topics such as profitability, regulatory/compliance requirements, workforce/staffing, and a renewed commitment to the customer experience, IP will become an integral part of the overall enterprise strategy. If yours is one of the companies that either have recently moved to an IP platform or are considering making the transition, how can you best leverage your platform and IP solutions--such as call recording--to provide the most benefit for your company? You'll see, below, how three companies in different industries are using call recording in an IP environment to grow the bottom line, improve training, and provide better customer service. Creating New Revenue Opportunities A third-party administrator of long-term life insurance determined that one of the best ways to generate business was to ensure that every interaction with its client insurance agencies was of the highest caliber. The company wanted to capture 100 percent of its calls for compliance purposes, automate many of its internal processes, and use the customer intelligence captured to refine and enhance its customer service and sales initiatives. Virtually all areas of the company, including marketing and claims, as well as policy-owner services, now use VoIP recording. By reviewing calls, the company is able to solve critical business issues, meet its compliance and quality requirements, provide better agent coaching, and train new hires in dispute resolution. The company estimates that it has increased workforce productivity by almost 50 percent and decreased data error rates by seven percent. Capturing Best Practices and Improving Training Credit unions--like all financial institutions--must meet a broad set of federal regulations as well as the high service performance expectations of members whose money they manage. To effectively meet its members' service expectations, one credit union invested in a solution to monitor and record member transactions. System requirements included ease of use, reliability, robust archival capabilities, and scalability. The company's VoIP recording solution allows it to meet all regulatory requirements while capturing and archiving 100 percent of calls, which are automatically tagged and categorized for use in business optimization actions and dispute resolution. Contact center agents are trained using "best practice" interactions that are captured and organized by category in the VoIP recording solution. Management credits the VoIP recording solution with a 40 percent improvement in contact center service quality and a 20 percent improvement in frontline supervisor productivity. Resolving Customer Disputes A concrete company's records showed that a customer ordered seven truckloads of cement. The customer's records indicated that they had ordered only four truckloads. Because there was no record of the order (as it was placed over the phone), there was no way to review the transaction to determine where the miscommunication occurred. The concrete company ultimately had to bear the cost of the over-shipment. To avoid miscommunication and safeguard against potentially expensive litigation, the company now records every customer interaction. Its VoIP recording technology serves as a tool for dispute resolution, while also helping the company ensure a superior level of service to its customers, as its recorded interactions are reviewed and evaluated to determine service quality. What is the Future for VoIP? IDC reports that about 10 percent of all voice calls are now made with IP technologies. And a poll by CompTIA found that businesses believe that VoIP offers the most opportunity for productivity gains. According to Gartner research, most organizations will not benefit from a single feature of VoIP, but rather from the sum of many individual changes that support business initiatives and increase efficiency. The driving force behind the adoption of VoIP continues to be significantly reduced costs associated with IP telephony. However, as you can see, new applications and benefits to be realized throughout the larger enterprise are also creating a buzz for wider VoIP adoption and deployment. As the list of cost and performance benefits associated with recording and monitoring over VoIP continues to grow, businesses will find it increasingly easy to justify investments in IP recording and other workforce optimization technologies--from recording to staffing to training and more. About the Author Greg Sherry is director of marketing at Verint/Witness Systems, a global provider of workforce optimization software and services. Witness Systems is headquartered in Roswell, Ga. Greg's background includes leading business optimization and service quality initiatives at Verizon Wireless (GTE Wireless).