Introduction to Telecommunication Equipment 201:

1
Introduction to Telecommunication Equipment
201 PBX, ACD, IVR, CMS, CAS and Workforce
Management or How to Select Add-On Telephone
Systems to Fit Your Needs Bill Brackin Program
Director, North Sound 2-1-1 And Telephone Systems
Manager Volunteers of America Western Washington
2

• Telephone Systems
• Optional Special Features
• Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
• Skills Based Routing
• Voice, Email, Fax, Chat
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
• Speech recognition
• Call Center Software
• Call Recording
• Call Accounting
• Voice Mail
• Workforce Management (WFM)
• Online Hiring Software
• Integrated Training Tools
• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
• Work at Home or Remote Agents
• Contact Management System (CMS)
• And more.

3

• Telephone Systems
• Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
• Routing incoming calls is the task of the ACD
  system. ACD systems are often found in call
  centers or offices that handle large volumes of
  incoming phone calls from callers who have no
  need to talk to a specific person but who require
  assistance from any of multiple persons (e.g.,
  customer service representatives) at the earliest
  opportunity. The routing strategy is a rule-based
  set of instructions that tells the ACD how calls
  are handled inside the system. This capability
  may include e-mail, fax, and/or chat as well as
  voice.
• Many switches already include an ACD in their
  software.

4

• Telephone Systems
• Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
• Skills Based Routing
• Call routing can send calls to the agent best
  suited to handle that call. For example, Spanish
  speaking callers can be routed to agents who
  speak Spanish if they are available. A person
  with disabilities can be routed to an agent who
  specializes in services and resources for persons
  with diabilities.
• Call routing can also be based on other factors
  such as the caller ID of the caller, the number
  that was dialed by the caller, a database that
  establishes priority of certain callers, etc.

5

• Telephone Systems
• Contact Centers
• collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat,
  and e-mails at one location is known as a contact
  center. This means that no matter what contact
  method is used, the system can identify the best
  agent to handle the contact. Through
  multi-channel, skills-based routing, agents can
  handle both voice and non-voice communications
  with your callers.

6

• Telephone Systems
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
• IVR is an interactive technology that allows a
  computer to detect voice (speech recognition) and
  keypad inputs.
• IVR allows customers to access a companys
  database via a telephone touchtone keypad or by
  speech recognition, after which they can service
  their own inquiries by following the
  instructions.
• IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or
  dynamically generated audio to further direct
  users on how to proceed. IVR systems can be used
  to control almost any function where the
  interface can be broken down into a series of
  simple menu choices.

7

• Telephone Systems
• Call Center Software
• Many telephones systems come with ACD built in,
  but if you want more than just call distribution,
  you will need to add call center software, and
  possibly a server, to your telephone system.
  These usually provide a better agent interface
  through their computer screen, a customizable
  real-time supervisor screen, statistical reports,
  and more.
• Call Recording
• Call recording software or call logging software
  allows a party to record a telephone conversation
  to a digital file, usually in .wav or mp3 format.

8

• Telephone Systems
• Call Accounting
• A Call Accounting System is a software or
  hardware application that captures, records, and
  costs telephone usage events. Call accounting
  systems detect outbound and inbound calls, call
  ring outs, call routings, abandoned calls, and
  other activities. Formulas can be added to cost
  out useage by extension, department, location,
  etc.

9

• Voice Mail Automatic Call Back
• - Voice Mail is a centralized system of managing
  telephone messages for a large group of people.
• Automatic call back eliminates customer
  hold-time instead the ACD system calls the
  customer back when they move to first place in
  the queue.

10

• Telephone Systems
• Workforce Management (WFM)
• Workforce management software provides a tool to
  manage scheduling needs for the agency. WFM
  collects information on the number, length and
  time of day of calls and calculates the number
  staff needed for each shift. It also provides
  trends from historical data plus live data with a
  variety of reports. Managers use Workforce
  software for planning meetings, time off or
  vacation time for staffing based on service
  levels. Use advanced analysis to predict service
  levels, abandon rates and queue times. Offer
  agent self-service to your employees so they can
  review their schedule, setup schedule
  preferences, request time off, and swap shifts
  with other call center agents.

11

• Telephone Systems
• Online Call Center Hiring Software
• Some systems offer optional hiring management
  software that pre-screens candidates, introduces
  the applicants to your company, gives online
  tests, and introduces the candidates to the
  position that is being offered.
• Hiring the wrong candidates who dont possess the
  skills, personality traits or cognitive abilities
  for the job often results in high attrition
  levels, increased costs, poor job performance and
  decreased customer satisfaction. These software
  systems help you prescreen and hire the right
  staff for your call center.

12

• Telephone Systems
• Integrated Training Tools
• Call centers often have slow times. Integrated
  Training Tools can observe slow periods and feed
  short training modules to idle agents to make the
  best use of the time. These trainings can be
  linked to assessment tools in some systems so
  that the training modules are the ones that will
  be most helpful to that specific agent.
• Most companies try, but many find it difficult to
  translate customer opinion into meaningful data
  that promotes better service delivery.
  Delivering a customer service survey immediately
  following a contact allowing the customer to
  leave comments regarding their experience. These
  results are made available to the agent and
  managers in near real-time. The most effective
  way to boost call center agent performance is
  with immediate customer satisfaction research. 

13

• Telephone Systems
• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
• CTI enriches your callers experience by
  retrieving caller-specific information and
  matching it with the best agent to help them.
  Also, the screen pop feature saves both the
  callers and the agents time by automatically
  opening the right screen directly to the agent's
  desktop.  Finally, CTI can let a caller utilize
  self-service by getting or setting his own
  account information over the phone without
  talking to a live agent.
• Give agents the option to check a case record,
  look up the status of a trouble ticket, or find
  the nearest agency to the dialed numbers
  location.
• Priority routing means all your customers can
  dial the same number, but preference can be given
  to those who meet your custom criteria.
• Screen pops save both the customer and the
  agents time by eliminating time-consuming steps
  of looking up customer information.

14

• Telephone Systems
• Work at Home or remote Agents
• Functionality in your telephone system or
  services that allow agents to work from home,
  relocate to another location, or to work in a
  mobile environment. Check with your vendors to
  see what you need to do to add this
  functionality.
• The real motivation for deploying and managing
  the at-home agent is based on one simple
  principle improved agent satisfaction leads to
  increased caller satisfaction. It also helps you
  avoid adding more square footage to your call
  center, and allows you to hire from a larger
  geographic and demographic area.

15

• Call center analyst firm Frost Sullivan reports
  the typical median age of an at-home worker is
  38, while the average age of an on-premise call
  center agent is 23.
• Additionally, more than 80 of home agents have
  some college-level education this is only true
  of 35 of agents in brick-and-mortar centers.
• Many companies have reported a sharp increase in
  retention rates above 80 or more with their
  at-home agents while traditional call center
  agent retention is dramatically lower, less than
  25 (from BusinessWeek, Dec 2007).

16

• Telephone Systems
• Contact Management System (CMS)
• A Contact Management System (CMS) is an
  integrated solution that allows organizations to
  record relationships and interactions with their
  callers. This information includes all emails,
  documents, jobs, faxes, calendar and more.

17

• And more..
• If you can think of it, a telephone systems
  manufacturer has probably already developed a
  system to handle it. Ask your vendors.
• Questions???

18
More Information
Bill Brackin, Program Director North Sound
2-1-1 [phone] bbrackin_at_voaww.org