CTI: The Bridge to a More Cost Effective Contact Center
December 24, 2008
Computer telephony integration (CTI) technology, which synchronizes and blends telephone and computer interactions, has been around since the 1970s. While CTI offers a business many different benefits, the major users of this technology are contact centers that utilize CTI to reduce costs, decrease call handling time and improve efficiencies. The most common application of CTI is a “screen pop” where the CTI technology provides agents with caller information on their computer monitor as soon as the agent picks up the call. Additionally, CTI has the ability to authenticate and verify callers, route calls to the most appropriate agent through intelligent call routing rules, and allow call centers to fully utilize technologies such as interactive voice response (IVR), automatic number identification (ANI), and voice and video conferences.
A CTI application offers businesses the ability to increase profits by not only lowering expenses, but also, and perhaps more importantly, through brand differentiation and increased customer loyalty. Implementing CTI has numerous benefits to the enterprise and the caller. It is able to dramatically improve customer satisfaction while simultaneously reducing call center costs. It also is able to improve security by eliminating a potential breach point.
Although CTI has been available for some time, it has not seen widespread use beyond the largest contact centers because of the magnitude of investment that was required. Integrating CTI systems with telephone PBXs and a myriad of enterprise applications and databases, including CRM systems, was costly and difficult because of proprietary software interfaces on both sides. Implementation costs and complexity therefore limited its affordability and its applications for small and mid-sized companies.
CTI Benefits All Organizations, Regardless Of Size
Today, conditions have changed. Advances such as VoIP (voice over internet protocol) and standard software interfaces, such as SIP and Web services, for both PBXs and enterprise applications, have made CTI more affordable and more practical than ever before. Now, even a contact center with fewer than twenty agents can realize the benefits of a CTI application. Likewise, the potential benefits of CTI for large contact centers have skyrocketed.
It is important to note that there are two major benefits a CTI system can deliver for your organization. First, CTI provides cost savings, lowering many of the expenses associated with running a contact center. Second, firms will see improvements in customer loyalty and brand differentiation due to drastically improved customer service. Frequently, CTI is implemented only to reduce cost structures, but more and more, improvements in customer service are bringing benefits that by themselves can drive the decision to invest.
Major benefits will come in the form of cost savings
Organizations will see cost savings in a variety of areas; from streamlining call processing on factors, which result in higher throughput, to improved staff retention and enhanced customer choice. The majority of these savings will stem from a reduction in call time, which in turn can reduce customer service representative (CSR) labor costs. While each organization is unique, the majority of cost savings typically comes from CSR cost reductions. There are significant cost savings, however, in other areas as well. In a typical organization, CSR cost reductions may account for only 54% of the potential total cost savings. CTI will provide significant cost and resource savings to an organization in a variety of areas, including the following:
- Reduction of CSR labor
- Reduction of CSR churn
- Reduction of lost customers
- Reduction of enterprise advertising costs
- Reduction of liability caused by security breaches
- Reduction of telephone network toll expenses
- Reduction in the cost of customer database errors
CTI’s Impact On the Caller Experience Can Not Be Ignored
In today’s economy, retaining customers is even more important than ever to the bottom line. Virtually every aspect of CTI improves the caller experience. Not having to repeat information is a significant benefit to the caller, while using Caller ID to identify that a caller is a subscriber will decrease the complexity of the call and make the interaction a more satisfying experience.
Overall, CTI provides the following benefits to the caller’s interaction with your organization:
- The use of Caller ID/ANI eliminates the need to provide identification information
- Eliminates the aggravation and time wasted due to repeating information
- Eliminates the time that is wasted waiting to access the callers account information
- Prevents problems caused by misidentification of customer status
- Protects the caller from security being breached by a dishonest CSR
When looking to reduce costs while retaining customers, you should consider these statistics when trying to assess the value of improved customer loyalty:
- 50% of customers with a complaint will leave
- Handling a call on the first contact results in 96% customer retention; each subsequent contact results in a 10% customer loss
- The cost to gain a new customer is five times the cost of maintaining an existing one
- Customers who have had a positive contact center interaction are more than 30% more likely to repurchase than those who have not
- 30% to 70% of new business customers are obtained via positive referrals
Conclusions
With payback periods shorter than one month in many cases, CTI is among the rare technologies that yield an undeniable win-win opportunity. Though the payback period and ROI will vary depending on the firm’s size, the number of agents and other factors, it is now undeniable that the return is well worth the wait and the investment.
For more information on the benefits and the ROI that your organization can receive from a CTI application, please contact Syntellect.
J.R. Sloan is Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at Syntellect. To read more of his columns, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Greg Galitzine
