Interview: 'Our aim is to reduce customer calls'

Bangalore based 24/7 Customer is the first Indian BPO to provide

integrated customer lifecycle management (CLM) services that delivers a seamless

end customer experience across the entire lifecycle. As the chief innovations

officer (CIO), Mohit Jain, heads the new division "Innovation

Labs" that continually innovates using artificial intelligence and other

technology tools to deliver new products and services in the domain of CLM

The BPO sector is on a redefining path

where concentration is more on quality. How would you describe the transition of

objectives?



In the last 5 years, the emphasis was more on organizations trying to

ensure that the entire system works round the clock in order to extend support

for customers across the globe. So the prime objective of IT systems was to keep

the nuts and bolts of the processes running well. However, over the last

one-year, we have noticed that companies are laying more emphasis on the quality

of calls — to understand what each customer call reflects and how to reduce

the number of calls. Reduction in number of calls coming in would reflect

efficacy of first-call resolution and lesser repeat calls. In some cases the

companies' objective is to eliminate calls altogether. Organizations are

looking at having a right mix of channels (web, e-mail, chat or voice) so as to

lower the cost per contact. This represents a shift in the outlook of the

companies in what they expect from IT.

In what way are IT systems being modified

to address these objectives?



As BPOs are witnessing the phase two of the service management, the

role of technology is changing to empower businesses. The critical objective is

to understand various dimensions of the nature of the problem, when did the

customer last contact and through which channel, what were the past responses

and what best response to be given presently. So application of data analysis

across multiple channels is a critical requirement; the ability to mine the

humongous data and to provide business insight is second imperative; finally, to

use this insight to enhance customer's experience becomes third imperative.

How have you implemented technology at

24/7 Customer to align with your business goals?



Our business goals are tightly aligned with the end-consumer, which

means we will do whatever it takes to enhance customer's experience. Our focus

is on customer's entire lifecycle management. A chief objective is how to

reduce number of calls and ensure best customer experience.

We have slowly and steadily created a data warehouse that holds

interactive data across various channels. Data mining accurately captures the

customer's footprint across all channels-voice, chat, web or e-mail. We have

used both conventional statistical tools and very advanced AI tools to create

business insights. To give some example, when a call arrives, there are several

dimensions of the call — the customer dimension, agent dimension, product and

type dimension. We have solutions to understand what combination of these

dimensions can lead to maximum number of repeat calls. So our data warehousing

and business intelligence tools alert the agent to pay attention to this

analysis. Therefore, the agent is well equipped to address the customer's call

effectively while saving time.

How are you able to ensure consistency of

service to a customer across all channels?



This is the single largest problem. When a customer connects to us

through more than one channel, then the challenge is for the agent to understand

the nature of past interaction. If we cannot establish dialogue connectivity we

can lose a customer. For this we have deployed three tools — identity

management system that identifies the customer across multiple channels;

dialogue services that maintain the context of conversation and; powerful

knowledge management system that prompts every agent as to what he should talk

with the customer. This makes it easy for the agent who is responding to the

customer's query to identify the customer as well as the dialogue service

prompts the agent what dialogue point has been reached from past interactions.

Recently, data theft in India has become a

focal point? As a CIO what steps do you feel are necessary to safeguard against

this?



I think it's a needless controversy that is over hyped by the

media. The reason is that if you were to compare data theft in India so far with

the data theft occurrences in a single US based company has faced in a single

year, you will notice that the frequency of data theft in the US is very common

and we are not even aware of it as its never 'caught' by the media. But

having said that, Indian BPOs are very serious about data theft. Technology

already exists to prevent and eliminate data theft. Also, there are enough

policy guidelines in place. However, the challenge for a CIO is to how to knit

all these tools to ensure well-oiled system to prevent a data theft and carry

out proper investigation. At 24/7 Customer, we have deployed enough security

measures but as CIO I have to continually ensure the loopholes in the system are

reviewed regularly and to see that there is enough maturity of the processes.

The competition between rivals means that

margins are getting smaller, and firms need to take a hard look at ways to keep

their costs under control. Under these circumstances how are you coping with

technology requirements?



One of the core objectives is to keep exploring new technologies to

see how these suit our customers. We have never hesitated to spend on new

technologies. We began our operations in 2000, and from day one we have been on

IP infrastructure. The decision to go completely on IP infrastructure ensures

our control over cost. When the cost of bandwidth came down in India, we shifted

our telecom operations center from the US to India, saving us a lot of money.

This switch has effectively reduced capital expenditure between 30% and 35%

while our operating expenditure is reduced by 20-25%.

Also, our advice to others is that there is no choice but to

gear up for the future of convergence. We are extremely excited about WiMax as

it will allow us to offer jobs to physically challenged employees to work from

home. Besides, we can also attract a large workforce who can work from home and

need not be at office for 8 hours like housewives, students, etc. One of the key

reasons is that we can deploy and attract large population of workforce who can

work from home.

Malovika Rao



malovikar@cybermedia.co.in