Business Case for Call Center Agent
Im currently working on an a call center project that includes CTI and IVR.
I'm looking for an example of a business case that has been prepared to
justify the use of IVR and CTI technology in a large call center
environment. The current call center is a Nortel platform.
While not a business case, here's some direction on how to build.
IVR justification is the easiest. First, you need to know your cost/call
that goes to an agent (and everything that makes that up). With an IVR, you
assume that a percentage of your calls will never get to an agent because
the customer will get the answer they need in the IVR and hang up.
In our Residential centre, this amounted to 25% of the callers so, if we
received 100 calls, only 75 would go to an agent. So, there was a savings
on 25 calls. If enough calls don't go to an agent then you can also reduce
the number of agents you need.
CTI justification comes from time savings on a call. Again, in our
Residential centre (and we're rolling out to Business now, using same
justification), it was shown that a screen pop with customer's account
number would save 15 seconds on every call. This equates to lower 800 bills
(not a factor where I work, we're a carrier) and reduces the number of
agents you need as work times on calls are shorter.
Here is a general CTI costing model used by our sales guys. It doesn't
speak to IVR at all, but it does give you some ideas about the CTI
component.
CTI Payback Model
This CTI Payback Model provides a "first-cut" analysis of the payback
period that can be expected from an investment in CTI.
For the purposes of this particular model, the CTI functionality
considered includes: screen pop, coordinated call-data transfer between
agents and enhanced IVR integration in which information entered by
customers into an IVR system is ported to agent desktop PCs when a
customer elects to transfer from an IVR system to a live agent.
The payback on an investment in the above CTI functionality comes
primarily from two sources:
1) Agent productivity. Agents spend less time asking for and processing
basic customer information, and are therefore able to process more
inbound calls in a given period of time. This increase in productivity
allows call centers to process additional inbound call volumes without
an increase in the number of agents or to assign agents to additional
tasks.
2) Increased revenues / profitability. The improved customer service
levels resulting from the ability of agents to instantly recognize
customers by name and more quickly access customer information generally
leads to increased revenues and profits. From the customer's
perspective, your agents will appear to be more efficient and more
"on-the-ball". Your customers will reward you with increased loyalty,
and accordingly, increased sales.
This payback model requires a number of customer-provided assumptions to
be made under the Call Center Agent Data, CTI Cost Assumptions and CTI
Benefit Assumptions headings set our below.
While the model below does attempt to provide a reasonably accurate
"first cut" at a payback analysis, the actual payback on an investment
in CTI will always vary, based upon a number of customer-specific
factors and application requirements that are not included in the model.