Aspect Support Leverages Unified Communications to Improve Customer Satisfaction and Lower Hold Time by 76 Percent

Aspect, a unified communications (UC) solutions provider, today announced it has seen measurable results in its support call center through the use of unified communications capabilities and the Seamless Customer Service UC application for the contact center. Aspect® Technical Services is using Seamless Customer Service to utilize comprehensive inbound routing, coordinated voice self-service to live service and Ask an Expert functionality to provide integrated assistance to continue to increase first call resolution and enhance the overall customer experience.

“Unified communications is bringing concrete benefits to the call center, to the business and the customer, based on our own personal experience in Aspect’s customer support center,” said Gary Barnett, chief technology officer and executive vice president, research and development and Aspect® Technical Services, Aspect. “After deploying Seamless Customer Service, our support engineers quickly saw clear, measurable results demonstrating how UC could streamline communications and improve customer service. Companies that deploy this technology can expect to leverage presence, IM routing and reporting capabilities to reap the benefits of unified communications and improve customer- company interactions.”

As a result of the robust functionality within Seamless Customer Service, call hold times for Aspect Technical Services have been reduced by 76 percent to just 44 seconds per call. Additionally, since the initial introduction of the Ask an Expert capability, the overall first day resolution rate has increased by 7 percent and the time to reach a support technician with the correct skill set has improved by 8 percent. Teams using Ask an Expert to reach out to Aspect’s experts across the organization have shown overall increases in overall customer satisfaction scores by 6 percent, measuring 4.79 on a scale of 5.
 
Seamless Customer Service is helping Aspect Technical Services utilize a number of advanced features in the contact center, including:
 
Presence and IM routing- Ask an Expert, which uses the presence detection, instant messaging (IM) and conference calling capabilities of Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, enables support engineers to use presence identification and skill criteria to find available experts in other departments to rapidly address customer questions.Support staff can call or IM anyone in the enterprise, and even route an IM from a customer directly to that expert. The Ask an Expert feature logs and records this entire process, making it available for resource allocation analysis, quality monitoring, and regulatory compliance.

Conferencing Functionality- The entire Aspect Technical Services staff now has conferencing functionality at their fingertips and can also escalate from IM to live calls when needed. Seamless Customer Service together with Office Communications Server simplifies remote support with desktop sharing, which increases collaboration to resolve issues more quickly.

Unified Messaging- The unified messaging capability has been valuable to the team leaders and their managers, as all voice mails are received through Microsoft Outlook email and can be easily forwarded and/or retrieved through mobile devices.

Real-time and historical reporting- Senior Aspect Technical Services staff has found the consolidated reporting in Seamless Customer Service invaluable, allowing for rapid evaluation of team performance, call volume demands, and other factors critical to delivering an efficient and high-quality support service.
 
About Unified Communications Applications for the Contact Center
Unified communications (UC) applications for the contact center use software to target operational objectives with specific capabilities from the Aspect® Unified IP® and PerformanceEdge® platform products.  The applications deliver inbound routing, outbound dialing, voice portal and Internet contact, workforce management, performance management, campaign optimization, recording and eLearning capabilities to help organizations enhance customer service, collections and sales and telemarketing business processes.  Unified communications applications include Blended Interaction™, Seamless Customer Service™, Productive Workforce™, Streamlined Collections™, and Optimized Collections™.

About Aspect
Aspect provides software and consulting services that turn the potential of unified communications into real business results across the enterprise and in the contact center.  Applying 35 years of insight and experience, Aspect helps more than two-thirds of the FORTUNE Global 100, as well as small and medium enterprises, power their business processes with communications.  For more information, visit www.aspect.com.