Telephony World Exclusive: Conversation with Tom Chamberlain, Aspect Software
Aspect Software is a leading provider of communications technology that powers customer service, collections and sales & telemarketing business processes for small and medium enterprises as well as for two-thirds of the FORTUNE Global 100. Telephony World recently spoke with Tom Chamberlain, Director of Business Process Marketing, about Aspect’s recent Microsoft global alliance announcement and the company’s approach to unified communications for the contact center.
Customers make around 1 billion calls everyday into contact centers. Aspect estimates that 10% of the calls, about 100 million, require help beyond what the customer facing rep can provide. The typical workaround is for the rep to put the customer on hold while they use IM or some other means to find an internal expert to help resolve the customer’s issue. As a result, the calls take an average of 2.5 additional minutes at a incremental cost of $2 per call.
Aspect is building out a unified communications strategy for the contact center that will help companies address this problem and bring down costs while improving customer satisfaction. Based on Microsoft’s OCS, the Aspect solution will enable reps to query a virtual help desk of internal experts to find the person inside the company with the right skill set and is available to help in real time.
In addition to reducing average call times and the associated costs, customers are happier because they get their issue resolved faster and with one call. A secondary benefit of the system is tracking. The help requests going to the internal experts are collected for later analysis and development of FAQs and other productivity tools for the contact center.
The applications for the new technology crosses industry lines and is a function of issue complexity. For example, a software company could implement Aspect’s solution on a technical support desk. In another situation, a financial services company could use the solution for credit line approvals.
Microsoft is partnering with Aspect to bring the new solution to market. In addition to joint marketing activities with Aspect, Microsoft also made an equity investment in the company.
For more information see Aspect’s website at http://www.aspectcometogether.com.