by: Gary Van Gordon
SureConnect™, INI’s exclusive product for use in contact centers, has several key differentiators that make it an ideal answer to callback needs.
SureConnect has the following attributes:
- It has been developed in close association with the Avaya Voice Portal working in conjunction with the Avaya Aura architecture. The integration provides the best use of the available technology and tightly couples the solution to the contact center it serves.
- Unlike many callback products that call the agent before placing the call to the customer when the request is ready to be serviced, INI SureConnect does the opposite. This provides several benefits:
- Agent productivity increases because agents do not lose valuable talk time as they interact with a callback product and then wait for it to call the customer.
- Customers do not have to leave a message. SureConnect simply validates the phone number to be called back and lets the customer know they will be called when they are next up to speak with an agent
- When the customer is called back, validation in the form of pressing a touch-tone digit is requested. This simple step allows faster execution of the process and also improves agent productivity by ensuring that calls to answering machines do not get transferred to agents.
- Upon receiving the callback, after the customer acknowledges they are “live,” the system lets them know that they are next in line to be served as a high priority caller.
One of the things INI has learned from our years of solution development of callback products is that there are more negatives than positives associated with the notion of “scheduling a callback request.” We eliminated that from SureConnect because:
- Customers want to be serviced as soon as possible. They did not call now to be helped hours later or tomorrow.
- Customers who schedule a callback are required to have more interaction with a system than they care to. It can create confusion and frustration to enter the required information.
- There is a huge credibility hit on the organization if the callback is not made when promised. Who can guarantee that there will be an available agent to handle the call at 2PM or tomorrow at 10AM? Customers who were already frustrated can become even more annoyed when they do not receive the callback as promised.
- A significant number of callbacks made at a scheduled time/date are not answered by customers requesting the callback. Again, this can set up a credibility hit when the customer is unavailable for what may be a short window of time during which the callback attempt is made. If agents are called first as in traditional callback solutions, another productivity hit occurs as the agents do not connect with customers. Even worse is when the solution involves multiple attempts but the customer is never available to accept the call.
- SureConnect calls the customer back as soon as they are the next to be served. Just like they want.
SureConnect is one of many products and solution sets available from INI. It can be closely integrated with other INI contact center solutions to make it more than just a stand-alone “call spike” product. And unlike with many non-integrated, stand-alone products, INI can and expects to help find ways to expand the available solutions served by the Avaya Voice Portal platform. With the multitude of self-service solutions available from INI, SureConnect can be one of the solutions available from the use of the Avaya Voice Portal, which leverages and maximizes the investment in the platform.
Whether used as a stand-alone solution or as part of several self-service solutions, INI SureConnect offers a cost-effective and superior approach to address call spikes in contact center traffic. INI strives to utilize technology to eliminate and/or reduce the requirement for customers to interact with live agents, while at the same addressing customer needs.
To discuss how SureConnect can meet your needs, please contact INI at sales@interactivenw.com or 800.732.3236.