Contact Center AI: What You Need to Know

AI has made huge strides in nearly every industry, and this impact has been keenly felt in contact centers. Contact center artificial intelligence (also known as CCAI) is one of the industries where AI has made significant waves and is revolutionizing productivity and customer understanding and satisfaction.

What is Contact Center AI (CCAI)?

Contact Center AI is the use of artificial intelligence to automate and streamline contact center operations for increased efficiency and cost savings.

Contact Centers are complex operations and the backbone of how many companies keep a pulse on their customers’ satisfaction levels and pain points. A contact center that runs smoothly is an indicator of the overall health of your business.

Contact centers are crucial for so many organizations, but a traditional contact center model requires extensive staffing and availability for 24/7 call center or chat responses. What results from these extensive needs is a contact center solution that puts your company in touch with its customers, but that depletes resources at the same time.

CCAI solves this problem by using AI to monitor calls, run reports, and automate chat or call interactions

Types of Contact Center AI Solutions

Contact center AI doesn’t refer to a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather a multifaceted set of capabilities that can be tailored to your organization’s specific needs.

The main types of contact center AI solutions are:

Reporting

Contact center reporting is used during customer interactions to gather data that is then analyzed and delivered to your organization for insights into customer trends and metrics like average call time, abandonment rate, and CSAT scores.

Speech Analytics

While contact center reporting is focused on the hard data surrounding call center metrics, speech analytics is an AI capability that analyzes customer interactions through the lens of language patterns, common words and phrases, and even a customer’s emotional state at different points in the conversation. Speech analytics is a valuable tool that takes call center reporting a step further by understanding customer emotions and behaviors.

Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA)

An IVA is a voice or chat service that uses AI technology to simulate conversations by mimicking human speech patterns to find solutions for customers in real time using internal knowledge. Many contact centers use this helpful service to free up time for customer service representatives and provide a streamlined experience for callers.

Testing

While contact center AI provides an entire host of solutions, it also introduces new use cases that need quality assurance testing. This testing can be automated and used to simulate a variety of possible contact center customer interactions to ensure the AI is enabling a smooth process from start to finish of every call.

Contact Center AI Recommendations

Contact Center AI solutions are necessary for contact centers to stay relevant and successful, and every variety of CCAI is useful in unique ways.

Some of Kenway’s top tips for implementing or refreshing CCAI in your organization are:

Consistent monitoring and training to prevent AI hallucination and ensure data governance.
Capitalizing on your CCAI reporting and speech analysis capabilities. The insights your CCAI solution provides for you will only be as useful as the changes you implement based on those reports.
Consider implementing conversational AI for your contact center solution if you haven’t already. This AI capability will help your organization keep customers happier while keeping costs down and is a great alternative to IVR models, which can often leave callers frustrated with a lack of specialized service.
Automated testing like Cyara’s Botium uses AI to test AI. This ensures seamless performance without adding complicated manual testing to your to-do list.

Implementing AI Throughout Your Organization

AI can feel overwhelming, especially if your organization has never used contact center AI. But the benefits of automated reporting, speech analytics, and increased productivity far outweigh the unknown that comes with implementing CCAI.

Focus on starting small, maintaining data security and governance throughout your implementation, and educating your team to use AI to their advantage.

If your organization wants extra support in the process of implementing CCAI, the Kenway team would love to help. Reach out today to learn more about how your organization can unlock the potential of your contact center!

FAQs

How is artificial intelligence transforming contact centers?

AI has transformed contact centers from call centers with capabilities limited by staff availability to dynamic contact centers that can field high call volume, answer customer questions, direct callers to proper experts, and provide expert insights all at once.

What is CCAI?

CCAI is the abbreviated term for contact center artificial intelligence, which is the use of AI to aid in contact center reporting, data collection, and customer service.

Another related but different term is Google CCAI, is a Google owned cloud-based platform that uses AI to help organizations with customer service and operational efficiency.

An In-Depth Guide to Contact Center Optimization

Contact centers play a vital role across industries, from healthcare and telecoms to retail and transportation. As customer service capabilities within these industries continue to expand, the demand for contact center optimization is growing.

Managing these advancements while ensuring security and exceptional customer service is essential and requires dedicated focus and strategy. In this guide, we’ll explore the evolution of contact centers, discuss best practices for optimization, and look ahead at future trends shaping the industry.

The Evolution of Contact Center Optimization

Since the 1960s, contact centers have come a long way from basic phone support. What began as simple call-answering has transformed into a dynamic, multi-channel center that incorporates chat, SMS, AI, and advanced automation tools. This evolution highlights contact center optimization and contact center workforce optimization — which includes factors like IVA and IVR services and AI optimized agents, as well as moving contact centers from on-premises servers to cloud-based. All of these factors and more contribute to the evolution of contact centers that has brought us to the point we’re at now.

Key Principles of Contact Center Optimization

Optimizing your contact center requires strategic improvements, from efficient call handling to enhanced self-service options. Each of these principles will aid your organization in achieving more contact center efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Efficient Call Routing and Handling

Efficient call routing is a foundational piece of contact center optimization. Continuous improvement in this area involves sharing key data points like customer intent, account number, authentication status, and service details with the agent desktop tool, so agents can understand customer needs instantly. This reduces response times, boosts First-Call Resolution (FCR), and helps match customers with agents prepared to address their specific needs.

Workforce Management Strategies

Estimating and managing the proper amount of available customer service representatives is a tricky task for contact center managers. When executed well, workforce management ensures the right staffing at peak times, reducing wait times and mitigating agent burnout. Data can be used for contact center workforce optimization by:

Forecasting Demand: Schedule agents based on call trends to meet demand.
Monitoring Performance: Identify high performers and provide training for those needing additional support.

Optimized Agent Performance

A well-trained team drives contact center efficiency. Keeping your agents ready to serve your customers means focusing on:

Regular Training: Keep agents updated on technology and customer service skills.
Feedback and Metrics: Use data like Average Handle Time (AHT) and CSAT to provide targeted feedback.

Improving Self-Service Capabilities

Self-service options reduce call volumes and allow customers to resolve inquiries 24/7. Tools like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) enable customers to handle routine questions independently, reducing costs and freeing agents for more complex calls.

Technology and Tools for Optimization

AI and Automation

Modern contact centers rely on AI-powered tools like Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) to streamline customer interactions. IVAs use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to provide automated assistance that closely reflects human conversation and speech patterns. Using an IVA for call centers reduces call volume, enhances self-service capabilities, and allows agents to focus on complex issues.

Reporting and Analytics Solutions

Intentional reporting strategies and analytics tools are crucial for successful contact center data-driven decision-making. Monitoring metrics like First Call Resolution (FCR) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) allows contact centers to identify trends, measure performance, and pinpoint areas for improvement. Regular reporting and real-time insights enable proactive adjustments, leading to better service quality and optimized operations.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

CRM and CEM systems are essential for maintaining and accessing comprehensive customer data. Integrating a CRM like Salesforce allows agents to quickly view customer histories, preferences, and previous interactions, creating a seamless experience across channels. CRM systems also support a personalized contact center approach, enabling responsive and targeted support that aligns with customer needs.

Implementing Best Practices

Change Management and the Importance of Starting Early

Change Management is essential when implementing new contact center technologies or processes. Starting this process early helps teams adapt smoothly and builds buy-in from key stakeholders from day one. Proactive communication and addressing potential challenges upfront will help ensure a smoother transition, making it easier for agents and managers to embrace new strategies and tools over time.

Training and Development Programs

A well-trained team is the foundation of an efficient contact center. Establishing regular training time not only optimizes agents’ skills but will also boost their confidence and sense of ownership in their work, so they are better equipped overall to handle diverse customer interactions.

Development programs should cover core areas such as customer service techniques, technology updates, and product knowledge.

Continuous Improvement Processes

Continuous improvement keeps contact centers agile and responsive. Regularly analyzing key performance metrics, identifying bottlenecks, and adapting strategies ensures the center remains effective and customer-centric. Leveraging AI tools like Agent Assist from Google and Five9 can further enhance performance by providing real-time support and insights for agents.

Case Studies and Real-World Applications

Contact center optimization is only important if your efforts yield true results — Kenway is proud to partner with a variety of companies and industries to optimize and bring success to their call centers:

One Fortune 50 telecommunications client needed to move their legacy IVR contact center systems into a single system that was scalable, data-centered, and focused on customer service. Kenway aided in this project by creating a single IVR system capable of serving legacy customer data and existing systems at once.
Another client needed a call center solution to streamline the management of complex data in real-time. Kenway used Azure Cloud to create a modern data solution that helped the client reduce infrastructure spend by 90% and enjoy one centralized call center data management platform.

Contact center optimization is multi-faceted, and the needs of your business will dictate whether a focus on cloud-based computing, data management, updated reporting and analytics, or change management should be the top priority for your optimization efforts. Focusing on optimization now is the best way your organization can keep up with the already rapidly evolving world of contact centers as a service transformation.

Future Trends in Contact Center Solutions

Artificial Intelligence

As previously discussed, AI is already present in contact centers, and that presence will only become more prevalent as time goes on. Certain industries like IT and telecoms are leading the pack in AI integration and optimization, while others like healthcare and financial services are a bit further behind in their advancements. No matter your industry or level of expertise in digital improvements, AI is here to stay.

Cloud-Based Contact Centers

One of the biggest changes in the digital landscape in recent decades is the migration of on-premises data storage to cloud-based data storage. Cloud-based contact centers, also known as Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), are already common across the many industries that use contact centers, but it isn’t too late to move your contact center platform from on-prem to cloud-based if you haven’t already.

CRM and Personalization

CRM integrations are important for the future of contact centers not only to ensure effective management but also to ensure a truly personalized approach to customer service in tandem with AI. The contact center industry is at a delicate crossroads in which digital optimization is more important than ever, but so is true, attentive customer service. A highly thoughtful CRM can be the key to accomplishing both of those goals at once.

Key Takeaways

Contact centers have evolved into multi-channel, data-driven hubs that require strategic optimization to stay effective and customer-centric. Key principles include efficient call routing, workforce management, and agent performance enhancement. Self-service tools like IVAs and virtual agents reduce call volumes, while CRMs like Salesforce ensure seamless, personalized interactions.

Implementing best practices like early Change Management, regular training, and robust reporting and analytics keeps contact centers agile. With emerging technologies like AI and advanced CRM integrations, contact centers are positioned to move from the outdated stereotype of call centers into efficient, customer-focused support centers that balance automation with personalized service.

Using these strategies will equip organizations to transform their contact centers into pivotal assets that drive both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. If your organization is ready to take the next step in contact center optimization and wants an expert partner for every step of the journey, reach out to Kenway today. Our contact center solutions experts offer tailored assessments and strategies to unlock the potential of your contact center.

FAQs

What is contact center optimization?

Contact center optimization is the process of using reporting, analytics, Change Management, and digital integrations like AI to continuously improve your contact center for more efficiency and better customer service.

Why is contact center optimization important?

Contact center optimization is important due to the ever-changing digital landscape that impacts contact centers, such as BI, CRM, cloud-based computing, and AI integrations. Staying up to date with these changing technologies is necessary for improved customer experience, which leads to happier employees, happier customers, and a happier organization overall.

What technologies can be used to optimize contact centers?

Technologies for optimizing contact centers include IVA and IVRs, AI automation services, cloud-based integrations, and CRM and BI tools.

Case Study – Revolutionizing Customer Experience with a Voice Virtual Assistant and Google CCAI

Client Profile

Industry: Telecommunications

Client: Fortune 50 telecom

Solution: Voice Virtual Assistant (VA) Implementation

Partner Role In Project

When a global telecommunications company wanted to build a new Voice Virtual Assistant leveraging Google's Contact Center AI (CCAI) platform, Kenway partnered with the client to harmonize the innovative capabilities of CCAI with the people, processes, and tools already in place. With Kenway’s help, the client established a platform of cross-functional learning, and Google gained insights into the client’s methodologies while the client received an in-depth understanding of CCAI strategies.

The Challenge

The client sought to improve the customer experience by implementing Contact Center as a Service (CCAI Platform) while upholding their high standards of operational efficiency and service. Their objective was to enable seamless interactions that delivered fast, accurate responses, alleviated the workload on their experts, and reduced operational costs.

While Google CCAI is an excellent out-of-the-box product, additional personalization is necessary to align with internal policies, practices, and service offerings. Balancing consistency in Google's Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) with the unique internal requirements is a complex task. This task requires a deep understanding of branding, including language and messaging. It also calls for close collaboration between Google and the client’s teams to integrate CCAI’s features while preserving the uniqueness of the client’s products and services.

The Kenway team worked closely with the client to identify the following goals:

Decrease Agent-Transfer Rates: Designing an effective customer experience to ask the right questions at the right times allowed the client to minimize the need for transfers between agents.
Achieve Containment and Cost Savings: Balancing self-service and containment was key. High self-service attempts didn’t always mean success, if customers were directed to FAQs but left without answers, it hurt their experience and failed to reduce costs.
Deliver the Highest Quality of Customer Service: Our team leveraged its deep knowledge of the client’s products and processes, supported by data analysis and testing, to gather feedback and identify opportunities for improvement and optimization.
Expand and Improve on Existing Self-Service: Utilizing CCAI’s data insights enabled the client to identify new areas for service enhancement and operational optimization.

The Solution

Data-driven product design decisions

Leveraging data plays a pivotal role in enhancing overall user experience. By leveraging feedback loop analysis and existing reporting tools like Power BI and Kibana, Kenway skillfully identified opportunities and pain points across all self-service customer experiences and brought them to Google with the goal of improving the customer experience and driving more calls into self-service.

Customer welcome and intent identification

Before a caller can access the variety of self-service functions, they first encounter a series of questions designed to capture their intent and confirm their account. Kenway recognized how essential it is to accurately identify the purpose of the call from the outset to deliver a tailored experience. By leveraging insights from Google’s data, Kenway optimized these initial prompts to feel natural and intuitive, creating an efficient, almost human-like dialogue that keeps callers engaged longer and encourages them to use self-service options.

NLU tuning

By quantifying the most common customer utterances, Kenway helped customize the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) model. These recommendations included giving customers more time to respond, slowing down prompts, and understanding specific terms, phrases, or accents unique to the client. As a result, the NLU model has significantly improved containment rates and enhanced accuracy in interpreting customer inputs, enriching the overall user experience. This analysis is conducted program-wide as customer behaviors and preferences evolve, utilizing a robust, customizable NLU model that adapts to fit specific needs related to products, services, and language.

Customer experience and journey mapping

Tying the customer experience to an overall customer journey strategy is essential to enhanced Customer Experience (CX) decision-making. It’s crucial to the customer journey enhancements to minimize excessive questioning that can frustrate callers. By ensuring that questions are relevant and leveraging known customer information from past interactions, the IVA can more effectively guide callers through the system without overwhelming them. This contextual awareness allows the system to make informed decisions about a caller’s intent, reducing the need for clarification and streamlining the overall experience.

The Results

Significant Progress

With these enhancements, the client’s Google CCAI platform made significant strides in success metrics and self-service containment rates, currently handling over 25 functions, such as payments, troubleshooting, and billing, while servicing more than 1 million customers daily.

Data-Driven Refinements

The rapid development of call functions is based on continuous refinement cycles using data from real callers. The team designed an efficient call flow by carefully analyzing NLU and customer inputs that adapt to evolving consumer needs. This includes reducing unnecessary prompts, leading to increased caller engagement and a seamless experience.

Trust and Cost Efficiency

While serving a larger number of callers can generate direct cost savings, the greater benefit lies in the enhanced trust between our client and its customers. By implementing an efficient system that effectively serves customers, both parties are building a reliable foundation for future interactions.

Conclusion

The client’s successful implementation of Google Contact Center AI, guided by Kenway Consulting, highlights the critical role of strategic collaboration, specialized technical knowledge, and data-driven insights combined with deep business knowledge. This partnership has led to notable improvements in operational efficiency, enhanced customer experiences, and innovative service delivery.

Are you ready to elevate your customer interactions with an effective Voice Virtual Assistant strategy? Contact us today to discover how CCAI can transform your service capabilities!

Improving Call Center Operations with Speech Analytics

Speech analytics in call centers is a powerful tool used across industries. This practice uses speech analytics to analyze customer-agent conversations for an improved understanding of customer pain points and potential call center improvements. While speech analytics has been used since the early 2000s, recent AI capabilities have introduced more efficient and accurate data analytics based on live call speech analytics.

Because we know that customers largely prefer call-to-chat, this level of detailed analysis is necessary for call center optimization due to the complexity of spoken human language. The speech patterns, region-specific words and phrases, and emotional cadence of a conversation greatly impact the success or failure of a customer service interaction. The more quickly a conversation can be analyzed for quality assurance, proper call routing, and ensuring regulatory compliance, the better equipped your call center will be to continue serving customers with efficiency.

Understanding Speech Analytics Benefits

Understanding and optimizing contact center analytics is a huge consideration for every organization with a contact center. Contact center analytics considerations range from optimizing your infrastructure, using Business Intelligence tools, and keeping track of essential contact center metrics for accurate reporting. However, all of these analytics components will be obsolete if your contact center speech analytics capabilities are insufficient. If you want to accurately gather contact center data, a robust speech analytics foundation is the way to achieve it.

Additional speech analytics benefits include:

Enhancing Customer Experience: Positive customer experience is the center of all contact center success, which is why real-time insights for adjusting interactions in the moment are so important. The more responsive to customer needs your agents can be through AI speech analytics, the quicker calls will be resolved and satisfaction will improve.
Improving Agent Performance: While speech analytics are used primarily to assess the satisfaction of customers, agent performance analysis is a lesser-known but equally important use of speech analytics. Speech analytics can identify team member training needs, monitor compliance, and give agents the tools to consistently perform to the best of their ability.
Providing Actionable Business Insights: When customer experience and agent performance are enhanced with speech analytics, your business will experience greater success overall. When speech analytics capabilities are used consistently and accurately, broad business data can be gathered and used for marketing strategy and product offering improvement based on customer feedback trends.

Key Speech Analytics Metrics and Features

Speech analytics needs are different for every organization based on company size, current business goals, and specific customer needs. There is plenty of room for customization after establishing a speech analytics foundation, but this list details some of the most important KPIs for businesses to track with their speech analytics capabilities:

Common KPIs to Track Using Speech Analytics

Call Sentiment: This KPI measures emotional tone to understand customer satisfaction—are customers quiet, irritated, upbeat, or talkative?
Script Adherence: Many call centers have scripts that are used by call center employees to ensure they adhere to the organization’s voice and tone to maintain consistency across customer service interactions. Speech analytics can track how often this script is followed or departed from during calls.
Keyword Frequency: In addition to scripts, companies have certain keywords and phrases that are important for customers to hear and associate with the organization’s customer service. Speech analytics is a helpful way to measure the frequency with which these keywords are used, and how well call center employees are able to incorporate those words and phrases into regular speech patterns.
Call Silence: While the words used on a call are important, what goes unsaid is equally important. Long moments of silence on a contact center call may indicate a lack of understanding between the representative and customer, slow technology processes, or additional issues that can contribute to a slow or negative customer experience.
Customer Effort Score (CES): This score gauges the effort customers put in to resolve their queries—do your customers interact with your contact center from a posture of resignation, assuming their problems can’t be solved? If so, this highlights a need for your call center to communicate its capabilities more effectively from the outset.

These KPIs are clearly useful, but how does speech analytics actually track these performance measures?

Important Speech Analytics Features

Keyword Spotting: KPIs are determined by tracking specific keywords or phrases that indicate issues or opportunities. If a certain keyword is used consistently in the same type of customer instance, it will be flagged by your speech analytics software as a signal that it may be time to rework that aspect of your contact center process.
Emotional Tone Analysis: This feature is directly related to the call sentiment KPI, in which your AI speech analytics service is able to analyze changes in tone to detect customer frustrations or satisfaction.
Real-Time Alerts: Customers interact with contact centers for hundreds of reasons and in hundreds of scenarios. Due to the variables at play, calls can escalate unexpectedly, and agents may need assistance in diffusing a situation or work through compliance issues. Real-time alerts from your speech analytics software will ensure your agents are never left stranded in a tough situation, and that your speech analytics call center management is always made aware of potential issues when they occur, not after the fact.

Implementing Speech Analytics in Call Centers

Speech analytics in call centers is clearly crucial, but beginning the process of implementation can feel daunting. The good news is that the implementation process only requires a look at the existing elements of your business—and on the other side, your contact center speech analytics will be headed toward more efficiency and optimization.

Step-by-Step Guide to Integration

Assess: Gain a clear understanding of your contact center’s current state before you make plans for where you want to be. Evaluate your current technology stack to determine current compatibility with available speech analytics tools. Ideally, your contact center speech analytics software will easily integrate with your existing tech stack.
Define: Your leadership team and other stakeholders will then define clear objectives for contact center speech analytics success, as well as top-priority KPIs.
Implement: Before fully jumping into your new speech analytics tool, test the chosen solution in phases for smoother adoption.
Train: Contact center teams will be interacting with the chosen speech analytics service day-in-and-day-out. Ensure buy-in by engaging agents and supervisors throughout training and education.

Once speech analytics is fully integrated into your contact center, make a plan for regular system evaluation and optimization. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it system, but rather one that requires attention and monitoring to ensure every piece of data is being tracked efficiently and accurately. Plan to regularly evaluate performance data to ensure alignment with overall business goals and make any necessary adjustments. For example, you may find that while your speech analytics platform is serving your organization well, there is space to explore further AI integration and capabilities.

Contact Center Speech Analytics Challenges

Speech analytics is a service nearly every industry has adopted for their contact centers. This service provides tangible improvement for customers, agents, and overall business goals for operational efficiency. In its ideal state, speech analytics give contact centers the ability to run smoothly and seamlessly. But roadblocks can occur as a result of speech analytics:

Data security: Gathering data from live conversations is one of the most effective ways to understand customers, but it also introduces additional data security concerns that must be taken into account. When you’re shopping for a speech analytics service, work with your IT and Security teams to prioritize a service with stringent security standards, and conduct regular security checks to ensure customer information is never compromised.
Integration issues: Choosing a speech analytics for call center service without full awareness of its integration capabilities can lead to dead ends during implementation. Your speech analytics tool will only be effective if it enables your existing systems to continue running seamlessly.
Data storage requirements: Using speech analytics means your contact center will be collecting and storing large amounts of data every single day. Without proper planning, data storage can become a concern quickly.
Compliance requirements: While storage space is a concern, so is data storage compliance. Considerations for maximum storage time and redacting personally identifiable information or sensitive personal information from your records is crucial for compliance.
Staff training: Your team’s ability to effectively interact with the speech analytics service can make or break the success of your data reporting. Mitigate this risk by conducting thorough and regular staff training.

Future Trends in Speech Analytics

Speech analytics is only growing more popular and advanced by the day, and contact centers are eager to see what new capabilities may emerge to increase productivity in the future.

Current emerging technologies in speech analytics include sentiment analysis advancements, natural language processing (NLP) and integration with AI-driven solutions. Contact centers will continue to benefit from new capabilities that are highly focused on improving customer sentiment understanding, creating a more personalized experience for customers from the start to end of a call.

In the future, contact center experts are predicting further potential for enhanced customer personalization, predictive analytics to aid agents during calls, and real-time feedback for quick decision-making.

Conclusion

The future of speech analytics for contact centers is bright. With an emphasis on live AI-feedback and increased customer sentiment understanding, the Kenway team sees a clear path for every organization in any sector to optimize their capabilities with contact center speech analytics.

No matter the platform or method of implementation your organization chooses, remember that prioritizing enhanced customer experience and agent performance will set your company apart and keep you ahead of the pack time and time again.

The Kenway team is proud to provide tailored contact center strategies for organizations at any stage of contact center optimization, with expert insight from both contact center and Artificial Intelligence experts. Whether you are just beginning to consider speech analytics for your contact center or you simply need to revamp your existing service, reach out today to start a conversation!

FAQs

What are speech analytics call centers?

Speech analytics in call centers is the use of AI and call monitoring to analyze conversations between customers and service agents.

What are the metrics of speech analytics?

Speech analytics metrics include call sentiment, call duration, call resolution rates, and customer effort score (CES).

What is the difference between voice and speech analytics?

While voice analytics technically refers to the cadence and tone of a voice and speech analytics refers to the actual words spoken, the term speech analytics is commonly used to refer to both.

Case Study – Customer Proprietary Networking Information Data Visibility and Business Intelligence

How Kenway Consulting Helped a Fortune 50 Telecom Provider Enable Data Visibility into Their Customer Election History and Develop Interactive Reports for Internal Investigations and Reconciliation

Client Profile:

Industry: Telecommunications
Client: Fortune 50 Telecom Provider in the US
Solution: Comprehensive Data Compliance Investigation and Business Intelligence Implementation

Background:

In today’s data-driven landscape, data visibility and Business Intelligence (BI) reporting are crucial for complying with increasingly stringent data privacy regulations. Publicity around security issues is gaining an increased level of attention. Enterprises must prioritize compliance with these mandates to avoid significant financial and reputational repercussions. Penalties for non-compliance can reach millions of dollars, with additional daily fines for ongoing violations. For corporations managing vast amounts of customer and/or employee data, achieving and maintaining compliance can be a complex undertaking.

The Problem:

A client's lack of data visibility into their extensive customer base exposed them to potential fines from the FCC for non-compliance with Customer Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Consumer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) regulations. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines reaching upwards of $80 million, jeopardizing the bottom line. Limited visibility into data storage systems and the broader IT landscape hampered the client's ability to ensure compliance and address system issues promptly. Without this enhanced observability, assessing and ensuring compliance was a guessing game or sheer luck.

The Challenge:

To stay compliant with data privacy regulations and prevent security risks, organizations must respond swiftly and accurately to data privacy requests. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of their data flows and the root causes of any internal failures—whether in systems, technology, or processes. However, gaining this level of insight is a major challenge.

Maintaining an enterprise-level reporting system that ensures data accuracy, tracks breaches, monitors system performance, and resolves issues within mandated timeframes involves the coordination of multiple teams and departments. Database owners were so focused on addressing production-grade problems they didn’t have the capacity to build out reporting dashboards for the business. As a result, the business did not have data to provide visibility into the area of focus.

The Solution:

With pre-existing knowledge of CPNI industry-specific regulations and FCC guidelines, Kenway was well positioned to ensure customer opt-in/opt-out preferences were accurately captured in internal systems, especially in complex data environments where customer preferences across multiple lines of business were being maintained in numerous source systems.

Kenway identified these appropriate backend source systems and engaged the database administrators to accurately ingest data into Power BI. Additionally, Kenway wrote custom scripts to parse through a system fallout mailbox to load that data into the business intelligence tool to reconcile against the backend data sources. The team delivered reliable, real-time reporting to the client team with a dashboard to address their gaps, enabling leadership to promptly identify finable offenses and correct within the mandated timeframes. The team built current and future state system mappings which supported the client’s approach to proactively reduce defects before they occur.

The Approach:

Define and confirm existing challenges and gaps.
Partner with business stakeholders to document requirements for the desired target state.
Groom requirements and prioritize a backlog of user stories.
Align delivery expectations with stakeholders.
Conduct discovery on the existing technical ecosystem and data sources.
Identify data and system-related defects and coordinate with appropriate teams to address.
Collaborate with database owners to understand key data sources and tables for each reporting use case. Understand and document the underlying logic behind each important field.
Ingest all relevant data sources in Power BI and start modeling in Power BI.
Iteratively build reports, demo, collect feedback, enhance, test, and deploy.
Educate business stakeholders on report usage and walk through specific use cases end to end. Provide supporting technical artifacts.
Deploy MVP reports to production.

The deliverables provided were:

Reliable, Real-time, Interactive Reporting Package
- Embedded logic to identify which records required immediate attention from the Compliance Team
- Deployed a product-centric approach to easily expand scope and scale at ease
Comprehensive Data Flow Diagrams
- Provided root cause visibility by creating detailed current and desired state system and data flow maps which facilitated efficient investigations and prevented potential fallouts before they occurred
Secure Environments
- Leveraging Cloud Gateways and ODBC drivers for security connectivity
- Secure daily data refreshes to reflect records that were rectified the day prior

A diagram of a diagram

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Data flow diagram showcasing the consolidation of legacy sources to provide enhanced data visibility for compliance.

The Result:

The Kenway Team delivered a comprehensive suite of over 10 cutting-edge, user-friendly reports with export capabilities, empowering users with actionable insights. Additionally, the Compliance Team was equipped with targeted training and robust technical documentation, enabling them to conduct thorough offline investigations for emerging use cases. This dual approach of powerful reporting tools and data visibility improvements significantly enhanced the client team’s investigative capabilities and operational efficiency.

The reporting suite significantly reduced the manual effort required for investigations and provided more relevant insights allowing users to spend more time rectifying the system fallouts, instead of identifying them in the first place. The Compliance Team began to streamline troubleshooting by tracing system fallouts to their root cause for swift investigations and rectifications within the time span defined by the FCC. Users are equipped with an understanding of upstream systems allowing them to streamline their work by proactively addressing potential recurring fallouts and work to limit their occurrence.

The FCC enforces substantial fines for the failure to comply with CPNI rules, including the annual certification requirement, that may subject them to enforcement action, including monetary forfeitures of up to $220,213 for each violation or each day of a continuing violation, up to a maximum of $2,202,123 per incident. These limits apply to instances of failure to meet the FCC’s notification requirements, including any breaches related to Initial Rights Notification (IRN) or similar obligations under CPNI mandates. The proactive approach to compliance has led to the identification and correction of 2,203 unique incidents, conservatively preventing an estimated $485 million in potential future fines.

The delivered solution is inherently scalable across multiple regions, business units, or customer bases as the business looks to expand its scope. The use of daily data refreshes, cloud gateways, and secure ODBC connections ensure ongoing compliance needs are met, and the risk of future violations as regulations or internal processes change is mitigated. Ultimately, the solution is well suited to easily be expanded and adapted to future regulatory changes and expansions.

Conclusion:

Throughout this solution walkthrough, we have explored how to navigate the complexities of data privacy regulations and explained how the lack of data visibility into customer data can pose a significant challenge for compliance. We have delved into the power of Business Intelligence and what it can do for any organization, particularly in terms of enabling internal Compliance Teams with the ability to identify actionable insights.

After partnering with Kenway, the organization had reliable data visibility for the first time to verify that they were compliant with FCC regulations. They received comprehensive data lineage documentation to streamline troubleshooting, allowing them to trace fallouts presented in the dashboard to their root cause and conduct swift investigations and rectifications. Moreover, the secure environment and daily data refreshes ensured they were always working with the most up-to-date information.

Ready to enhance your data visibility and streamline compliance? Contact us for tailored business intelligence solutions.

What Is a Cloud-Based Contact Center?

Customer service call centers got their start in the 1960s, and by simply picking up the phone when customers called, provided the most basic version of what we know today as contact centers.

As communication technologies evolved and customer service became more important to all businesses, call centers eventually evolved into contact centers. While traditional call centers are only for phone calls, contact centers expand those channels of communication across a variety of mediums, including online chats, SMS, and more.

The second major distinction between traditional call centers and modern contact centers is the data collection and analysis that takes place, leading to many contact centers now being cloud-based. This blog will explore what cloud-based contact centers are, cloud vs premise-based contact centers, along with the benefits and solutions they provide for customer service departments.

What is a Cloud-Based Contact Center?

A cloud-based contact center is a contact center solution hosted in the cloud rather than on-premises. This solution leverages cloud computing technology and is easy to scale, flexible, cost-effective, and secure.

Cloud Versus Premise-Based Contact Centers

On-premises and cloud-based contact centers have the same end goal — to serve customers more effectively. So why do organizations choose to make the switch from on-premises to cloud-based contact center solutions? And why now?

Scalability:

For organizations running complex contact center operations, scalability is the biggest felt difference between the on-prem and cloud-based contact centers.

Premise-based contact center use requires continuous server purchases over time, regardless of usage trends. Even servers with high storage will eventually hit capacity, and the cycle of buying new servers will continue.

A cloud-based CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) model can be automatically scaled for you by your vendor, so adding to your cloud capacity is a no-brainer during high-traffic times and sustained business growth, allowing for organizations to pay-as-they-go.

This works both ways, since a vendor will also scale back your cloud server capacity based on peak call times and seasonal upticks in business.

Staffing:

On-prem hardwire requires physical storage space and dedicated staff for managing the hardware. As remote work and smaller office spaces increasingly become the norm, many companies cannot justify the space and staff required to store on-prem contact center hardware.

Lifespan:

Hardware lifespan is limited, and upgrading hardware is costly. No hardware replacement is required when using a cloud-based contact center. Instead, your vendor can automatically make upgrades and improvements to your storage solution, so your organization always stays up to date.

Security:

Contrary to what some may think, a cloud-based contact center is actually more secure than on-prem. If your organization uses a provider who is taking the most current and compliant security measures, your cloud-based contact center will excel in security, as well as fully mitigating disaster recovery risk. On the other hand, it requires more staff and complex logistics to keep physical hardware safe and secure in your building at all times.

Current Cloud-Based Contact Center Trends

AI:
It should come as no surprise that AI is making big waves in the CCaaS world. Companies are either implementing IVR (Interactive Voice Response) services for agent support, intelligent flow support, in their contact center strategy, or they are updating beyond IVR to Intelligent Virtual Agents.

CRM Integrations: As competition between CRM and CCaaS providers increases, so does the potential for innovative integration. Partnerships between CCaaS companies and Salesforce, for example, show the potential for native CRM deployment within existing CCaaS solutions.

Personalization:
CCaaS solutions are so advanced that customers now expect personalized interactions from their contact center provider — many may not even realize they’re speaking to a virtual agent to begin with. Customers implicitly know that companies have access to their data and expect it to be used in call center interactions.

Top Industries for Cloud-Based Contact Centers

Wondering if your industry needs to focus on contact center optimization? Learn from these leading cloud-based contact center industries:

Telecommunications:

The telecoms industry uses CCaaS on a large scale, given their high volume of customers and high number of use cases for self-service. As these organizations become increasingly competitive, there is an incentive to reduce contact center costs, and cloud solutions are key to accomplishing this objective.

Banking and healthcare:

The needs of banking and healthcare customers are varied and often urgent. These industries require extensive compliance and security measures, which can take time and tedious repetitive tasks for call center employees. A cloud solution is ideal for these industries as they provide increased capability and IVR options for multiple levels of demand.

Manufacturing and retail distribution:

Supply-chain-focused organizations require robust contact centers for addressing customer needs, order issues, returns and exchanges, and more.

Features of Cloud Contact Center Platforms

Cloud-based contact centers come with a variety of capabilities. These will vary based on the provider your organization chooses, but some essential features to be on the lookout for are:

Omnichannel capabilities: As mentioned above, simple call centers don’t cut it for most organizations anymore. Find a contact center platform that has omnichannel capabilities for the places your audience is interacting with the most – WhatsApp, Messenger, and social media DMs are just a few omnichannel options to consider, so your company can show up where your customers already are.

Real-time analytics: Access to real-time analytics from your cloud-based contact center provider will be crucial for BI reporting and quick, relevant decision-making.

Reporting access: Certain vendors have paywall access to contact center data and reporting, which is a major setback for any company. If you are struggling with access, remember that this is your organization’s data. Paying for a cloud-based contact center service means you should always have access to the reporting your organization needs.

Benefits of Cloud-Based Contact Centers

Still on the fence about implementing or transitioning cloud-based contact centers? A few of the biggest cloud-based contact center benefits are:

Scalability and flexibility:

A contact center solution that suits your company well now may not be a great fit five years down the road. Migrating on-premises contact center solutions is a huge headache compared to the ease of migration that comes through simple cloud-to-cloud transitions.

Cost savings and reduced infrastructure costs:

While the on-prem versus cloud-based cost comparison will be different for every organization, an on-prem contact center solution is almost always more expensive than a cloud-based solution. Because of their longevity, simple implementation, and ease of access for those who need it, cloud solutions remove the upkeep costs required of hardware and software, as well as storage and staffing costs.

Enhanced disaster recovery and business continuity:

In the event of a disaster, cloud-based contact centers can continue to operate almost uninterrupted as long as your employees have access to the internet, in contrast to an on-prem contact center, which is vulnerable to power outages and physical damage.

Selecting the Right Cloud Contact Center Software

Choosing the right cloud contact center software comes down to your organization’s unique needs. Almost every CCaaS provider will meet your contact center needs on a basic level, but we encourage you to truly evaluate every vendor available to determine who will truly be a good fit.

Some cloud contact center software provider options include NICE, Five9, Genesys, and Google CCAI.

Kenway’s Approach

Kenway is proud to provide a strategic call center solution approach for customer service oriented organizations. Our focus on strategy, implementation, reporting, and support includes thorough vendor assessments and full digital transformation consulting and support from start to finish.

FAQs

What is a cloud-based contact center?

Rather than hosting a contact center on-premises, a cloud-based contact center is hosted online in the cloud.

What are the benefits of cloud-based contact center solutions?

Cloud-based contact centers provide solutions for organizations including cost savings, increased security, disaster recovery, advanced reporting and analytics, and flexibility.

What are the main differences between cloud-based contact centers and on-premises contact centers?

Cloud-based contact centers offer greater flexibility, scalability, and remote accessibility, with lower upfront costs and easier maintenance through a third-party provider. While on-premises contact centers offer more control over data and infrastructure, they require significant initial investments, dedicated IT resources, and are less adaptable to rapid changes in demand. The choice often depends on your business's size, budget, and operational needs.

Unveiling the Power of Intelligent Virtual Agents in Contact Center Solutions

In the rapidly evolving landscape of contact centers, businesses need to meet the expectation of seamless, personalized, and efficient customer service interactions. Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) have emerged as a powerful solution for meeting these demands. IVA systems are AI-driven solutions that enable businesses to automate responses and provide human-like, intelligent interactions that align with customer expectations.

IVA vs. IVR: The Journey from Traditional to Intelligent

Contact center organizations are transitioning from rule-based, static Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems to the dynamic capabilities offered by Intelligent Virtual Agents.

Traditional IVRs operate within predefined rules, provide limited assistance, and struggle to grasp the nuances of natural language. These platforms are a great start for contact centers seeking to serve customers through automation, but they do not allow the flexibility that adjusting to free-speech conversations requires.

IVA systems represent a leap forward, incorporating AI technologies such as Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to comprehend and respond to customers with contextual intelligence. These technologies empower IVAs to understand the intricacies of human language, allowing for more nuanced and context-aware interactions.

Additionally, IVAs emphasize omnichannel support for an optimized omnichannel strategy that ensures a consistent user experience regardless of whether customers engage through text-based chat, voice interactions, or SMS.

IVAs also represent the move from traditional data connectivity to a modern data view, as they can analyze vast amounts of customer interaction data and learn from past engagements to enhance future interactions.

All of these IVA features illustrate just how personalized and innovative IVA systems are when comparing IVAs vs IVRs.

The Crucial Role of IVAs in CCaaS Platforms

Like nearly every other industry, contact centers have evolved rapidly towards cloud-based platforms in recent years. Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platforms increase flexibility, scalability, and operational efficiency.

However, the main driver for organizations to move towards CCaaS solutions is that it eliminates the need to maintain on-premises infrastructure, which reduces cost and increases flexibility for remote workers.

IVAs are a core component of the CCaaS ecosystem. There are many vendors in the market today that offer this service across all channels. The 2023 Gartner CCaaS Magic Quadrant highlights the following vendors as standout leaders:

Whether voice, chat, text, or a combination of the above, CCaaS providers offer solutions to fulfill client’s needs for more responsive, data-driven, and efficient IVA systems.

IVA Implementation in Contact Centers

The IVA vs IVR conversation marks a significant evolution for contact centers. For companies seeking to stay ahead of the pack in contact center innovation, here are some tips when implementing IVA systems:

Develop Use Cases

Using IVA systems like a catch-all for your contact center’s potential inefficiencies will not serve your organization or your customers well in the long run. Before implementing your IVA, utilize data analytics to determine where your contact center may be falling behind, and whether an IVA could be the best solution for filling that gap.

Evaluate IVA Options

Once use cases are identified, it’s time to identify the right IVA provider for your organization. Factors to consider include cost, capabilities, and user-friendliness.

Test and Monitor Regularly

Testing your IVA system upon implementation is a crucial element of setting your contact center up for success as it grows and modernizes. Testing early and often will aid in identifying inefficiencies and pain points within the system. Continuous monitoring after the initial testing period is also important to ensure the standards for your IVA system always remain high.

Contact Center Solutions with Kenway Consulting

Organizations are embracing IVAs with advanced NLU and NLP capabilities, omnichannel support, and a data-driven approach. The flexibility and cost-efficiency of IVA systems position them as indispensable assets in modern contact center frameworks, offering a pathway to deliver exceptional and consistent customer experiences across diverse channels at a reasonable cost.

If you’re looking to take the next step in your contact center journey, have questions about IVAs vs IVRs, or aren’t sure how to get started, connect with our Contact Center Solutions experts to begin strategizing for a more streamlined and efficient contact center.

FAQs:

What are the differences when comparing IVA vs IVR?

IVAs use virtual agents to provide personalized conversations and solutions for contact center callers. IVRs are useful but less advanced tools, which use a prerecorded menu with limited navigation options.

How do businesses use IVR and IVA?

Businesses use IVR and IVA services for contact center optimization. IVRs are often used for automated menu offerings while IVAs can carry on full conversations with customers.

How to choose between IVA vs IVR?

Many businesses already have IVR capability in their contact center system and may decide that now is a good time to upgrade to an IVA system. This decision depends on the level of optimization and customer service your company desires to provide, but Kenway recommends utilizing IVR systems in order to stay competitive within your industry.

Implementing & Supporting Contact Centers for Single Computer-Telephony Integration (SCTI)

A Multi-Faceted Approach to Modernizing Contact Centers for a Leading Fortune 50 Telecom Provider

CLIENT PROFILE

Industry: Telecommunications

Client: Fortune 50 Telecom Provider

Solution: Contact Center Solutions, Enterprise Program Management

BACKGROUND

In an increasingly competitive business landscape, contact centers face the constant challenge of optimizing operational efficiency while enhancing customer experience. As businesses expand, whether through acquisitions, new service offerings, or growing vendor reliance, contact center infrastructures tend to fragment, which can significantly affect performance. With the growing need to support omnichannel customer communications—such as voice, chat, and video—the challenge becomes even more pronounced.

Recognizing these complexities, a Fortune 50 telecom provider sought to transform its contact center platform to drive efficiency and enhance customer experience. Their goal was to migrate more than 30,000 agents spanning over 400 centers and 16 countries from a legacy system onto a modern, unified platform. Kenway Consulting was engaged to lead this initiative, leveraging its expertise in Enterprise Program Management and Contact Center Solutions.

THE CHALLENGE

The client's contact center infrastructure was fragmented, largely due to legacy systems and acquisitions over time. With tens of thousands of agents across multiple lines of business, each with distinct requirements, migrating to a unified platform presented several key challenges:

Diverse infrastructure: Years of mergers and acquisitions resulted in fragmented technology stacks, with inconsistent upgrades and maintenance across different platforms. Integrating these legacy systems, each built for distinct purposes and leveraging different technologies, into a single, cohesive platform was a complex undertaking. The integration process required not only advanced technical expertise but also careful coordination across multiple business units to ensure seamless alignment and functionality.
Complex vendor landscape: With multiple vendors involved in different aspects of the infrastructure, aligning internal processes, resources, and technology requirements was a significant hurdle.
Change management: Ensuring user adoption and proper training for agents was essential to a smooth transition.
Supply Chain Delays: A six-month delay in server procurement, driven by widespread supply chain disruptions, significantly impacted the project timeline. As critical infrastructure components, the delayed servers played a vital role in the overall system, causing cascading effects across the entire initiative.

Kenway was tasked with leading the migration while navigating these obstacles, implementing a unified system that would streamline operations, and enhancing the customer journey.

THE SOLUTION

Kenway’s involvement spanned several years, working closely with the client to tackle the complexities of modernizing its contact center infrastructure which included multiple Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) systems to a single CTI vendor. By providing program management services, vendor management, and routing architecture and support Kenway ensured a seamless transition.

1. Enterprise Program Management

Kenway implemented a robust Enterprise Program Management approach to ensure alignment across all projects. The team facilitated regular stand-ups and deployed program-wide tools that enhanced communication across 20 project managers and technical SMEs. By doing so, Kenway was able to accurately forecast and keep project teams on track even when there were significant delays due to supply chain issues of crucial server components which delayed the project by 6 months and assist with the executive communications.

Key areas of focus included:

Vendor management: Kenway acted as a central hub between the client and vendors, ensuring all technical requirements were clearly communicated and understood. By collecting and organizing vendor information, Kenway ensured all teams were well-prepared for the agent migration process.
Dependency tracking: With multiple interconnected deadlines, the team used tracking tools to identify, monitor, and manage project dependencies. This was critical in maintaining progress, even during unavoidable delays.

2. Routing Architecture and Support

One of the most challenging aspects of the migration was developing a new call flow strategy while minimizing disruption to ongoing operations.

Call flow management: Kenway’s first step was to help map existing call flows onto the new consolidated design. The team conducted an in-depth analysis to ensure all routing logic was accounted for, avoiding errors during the transition.
Dynamic routing architecture: To facilitate a gradual migration, Kenway designed a system that allowed real-time traffic allocation between old and new call flows. This enabled the telecom provider to dynamically route calls to the appropriate agents while quickly addressing any unforeseen issues.
Troubleshooting: Kenway implemented an alarming system to detect defects during the migration. With deep expertise in routing architecture, Kenway swiftly identified and resolved issues, ensuring a smooth transition.

3. Testing Services

To ensure the infrastructure was robust and functional, Kenway played a key role in establishing and managing comprehensive testing services across various phases of the project.

Infrastructure testing: Kenway coordinated unit testing and failover/disaster recovery tests to verify the stability and reliability of the new infrastructure.
System integration testing: Over four months, Kenway facilitated end-to-end system integration testing, collaborating with all technical teams involved. By hosting daily stand-ups, tracking defects, and troubleshooting issues, Kenway ensured the successful execution of the test plan.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Kenway led UAT, creating the test plans and working closely with the client’s IVR teams to test platform functionality. This included ensuring that agents were prepared, and the platform was fully tested and ready for go-live.

4. Migration and Go-Live Support

Kenway's support was critical during the migration and go-live phases. From preparing agents to ensuring a seamless transition, the team handled multiple moving parts, including:

Agent preparation: Kenway created detailed cutover plans to manage agent provisioning across more than 10 Lines of Business (LOBs) and over 30,000 agents.
Go-live support: During the go-live period, Kenway provided hands-on support, troubleshooting configuration issues in real-time, and resolving defects to ensure minimal disruption.
Defect management: Over 20 distinct tracks within the project required defect management, which Kenway handled using structured prioritization methods, ensuring all issues were resolved efficiently.

5. Customer Experience Enhancements

While Kenway’s primary focus was on the migration, the team also identified additional customer experiences and applications that needed to be migrated onto the central virtual assistant platform. These applications utilized the timing of the platform change to incorporate enhancements during their migration period so the training could be incorporated holistically. Kenway identified the opportunity to help get these enhancements complete before migration live date and assisted with getting this incorporated into the overall program training curriculum. One such example is the agent desktop application, the tool an agent utilizes to manage a customer’s call. Kenway saw a gap in how enhancement requirements from the business were getting to the third party vendor to develop. Kenway stepped in to host requirements grooming sessions, create a backlog of enhancement requests, and see to its successful production deployment to time with migration live date. By going above and beyond just the migration scope, Kenway optimized the agent and customer experience beyond just the platform switch.

WHAT WE DELIVERED

Kenway’s comprehensive approach delivered significant value across multiple areas of the project:

Change Management: Kenway meticulously outlined business and technical requirements across all project tracks, ensuring seamless alignment with regulatory requirements and technical specifications.
Technical Documentation: Kenway provided thorough documentation of all technical requirements and regulatory standards to ensure smooth project execution.
Program Management: Kenway played a pivotal role in managing over 20 distinct projects, coordinating status reporting, and ensuring cross-team alignment throughout the SCTI platform migration.
End-to-End Testing (E2E): The team developed and executed rigorous UAT and E2E testing plans, ensuring all integrations were fully validated before going live.
Migration Support: With a focus on scalability, Kenway provided robust support for the CTI migration, helping the client manage defect resolution and ensuring a smooth transition for agents.

RESULTS

By leveraging Kenway’s expertise, the client successfully completed the CTI migration while enhancing their contact center operations. The result was a scalable, flexible platform capable of supporting the company’s evolving business needs. Key outcomes included:

Improved Scalability: Kenway's implementation of scalable processes and tools provided a solid foundation for future upgrades and Business as Usual (BAU) changes, enabling the client to easily adapt to evolving business needs.
Seamless Transitions: The robust change management approach and user acceptance testing ensured a smooth transition for business units and agents, minimizing operational disruptions and accelerating user adoption.
Increased Reliability: Comprehensive testing at every phase guaranteed the infrastructure’s reliability, reducing risks and ensuring a stable go-live with minimal downtime.
Efficient Execution: Collaborative efforts between Kenway, vendors, and internal teams ensured that all project objectives were met on time and within scope, delivering a fully integrated and efficient solution.

Kenway’s strategic approach, technical expertise, and commitment to operational excellence were crucial to the successful execution of this complex, multi-year transformation.

CONCLUSION

The successful implementation and migration of the CTI platform highlights the critical role of strategic collaboration, technical expertise, and effective program management. Kenway facilitated this transformation by coordinating complex vendor landscapes, optimizing call flows, and leading thorough testing efforts. As a result, the client was able to modernize their contact center infrastructure, improve customer experience, and establish a scalable foundation for future expansion.

Discover how our customized approach to contact center modernization and enterprise program management can optimize your operations and enhance customer satisfaction. Contact us today to explore how we can help your organization achieve operational excellence.

Master Contact Center Management: Key Principles for Success

Effective contact center management goes far beyond answering customer calls. Call center managers tend to a variety of needs day in and day out. Some of these needs include prioritizing customer satisfaction, agent-well being, and keeping your technology and workflows up-to-date.

Today, CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) Solutions involve more than just fielding calls. CCaaS solutions integrate technology, data analysis, and customer-centric approaches that can unlock significant improvements in customer satisfaction and operational effectiveness.

In order to better understand the complex world of CCaaS, we will be discussing contact center management best practices below:

Managing Customers

Every industry wants to serve its customers well, but contact center customers are particularly unique stakeholders because the core of contact center operations is based on customer interaction.

At Kenway, we spend a lot of time talking about contact center improvement ideas through technology, but your technology can only go as far as the foundation laid by the people in your organization. Managing customers also refers to managing the people and processes in your company, because maintaining healthy employees leads to great customer service, and great customer service leads to satisfied customers.

Tips for increasing contact center efficiency for customers and employees include:

1. Agent training

Contact center work requires a lot of person-to-person interaction, and those first impressions can make or break a call center interaction. Ensuring that your agents are thoroughly trained and given the tools they need to succeed is the best way to set your entire contact center up for success.

2. Focus on mindset

A customer-first mindset will help your agents approach every interaction with a positive, solutions-focused attitude.

3. Proactive problem-solving

The more your agents become familiar with the solutions your organization offers, the more they will be able to anticipate customer needs and address issues before they arise, resulting in fewer calls and happier customers.

Managing Technology

Now that we’ve covered the important interpersonal element of contact center management, it's time to explore the ins and outs of leveraging technology for contact center improvement.

1. Harnessing the Power of Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs)

IVAs have revolutionized contact center management by offering automated yet personalized interactions. These AI-driven assistants handle routine questions, freeing up human agents to focus on complex issues. The strategic implementation of IVAs can significantly reduce call volumes, lower costs, and elevate the overall customer experience.

2. Comprehensive Reporting for Informed Decision Making

Data is the lifeblood of effective contact center management. Business intelligence reporting, machine learning models, and predictive analytics provide insights into call patterns, agent performance, and customer behaviors. When this reporting is utilized, contact center managers can make data-driven decisions that lead to improved service quality and operational efficiency.

3. The Crucial Role of Routing Architecture

Efficient routing architecture ensures customer questions are directed to the most appropriate agent or channel every time. Dynamic routing considers factors like account data, agent skills, customer history, and intent. Routing architecture in contact center management can minimize wait times, enhance first-call resolution rates, and ultimately aid in customer satisfaction.

4. Synergy with Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)

CTI integration seamlessly connects call center technologies, enabling agents to access customer data instantly. Agents can then view past interactions and caller details in real time. Integrating CTI with IVAs and routing systems creates a unified ecosystem, resulting in smoother customer journeys.

5. Continuous Improvement and Training

Effective contact center management is an ongoing process. Regular performance analysis and strategic adaptation are necessary for managing both people and technology. Utilizing AI for continuous improvement is a great option. AI driven agent assist tools like Google’s Agent Assist or Five9’s Agent Assist are great places to start.

Next Steps in Transforming Contact Center Operations

Contact center management has evolved into a critical cost driver for organizations and demands a strategic approach. Embracing the steps outlined in this blog will help your organization enhance customer satisfaction, increase call capacity, and save on costs.

If you’re looking to improve contact center operations, streamline reporting, or find self-service opportunities, connect with our Contact Center Solutions experts today.

FAQs

How can you improve call center customer service?

To improve customer service in a call center, focus on enhancing agent training, implementing customer-centric technologies such as IVAs, and continually analyzing performance metrics to refine workflows and address inefficiencies.

How do you improve call center agent performance?

Improving agent performance requires a combination of regular training, performance-based incentives, and even AI-driven agent assist tools for faster and more accurate responses.

What is contact center management?

Contact center management involves overseeing the day-to-day operations of a contact center, ensuring customer satisfaction, agent well-being, and operational efficiency through technology, data analysis, and continuous improvement strategies.

What does a contact center manager do?

A contact center manager is responsible for managing the team of agents, overseeing technology implementations, analyzing performance data, and ensuring that customer service standards are met. They also focus on optimizing operational efficiency and driving overall improvement in contact center performance.

Testing Automation: What You Need to Know

With a long history in Quality Assurance, Kenway has been a trusted partner in supporting the implementation of automation solutions for our clients, specifically in the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and Contact Center spaces. Testing automation is a game changer for any company that can implement it; however, many do not consider the investments needed to ensure consistent success and meaningful ROI. Without common dependencies being proactively governed and appropriately managed, automation becomes impossible to implement effectively. Kenway works with our clients to address these extremely complex challenges while guiding them successfully through their automation adoption journey.

The Fundamentals of Testing Automation

Strategy & Process

A well planned and thorough implementation strategy is fundamental to the success of an automation initiative. By establishing specific goals and desired outcomes, teams can prioritize areas in need of automation. This clarity enables efficient resource allocation and ensures that automation efforts are targeted towards areas that will yield the greatest benefits.

Well-defined testing processes guided through comprehensive test plans help mold effective automation certification practices. These plans outline the scope, coverage, and test cases to be automated, ensuring that all critical scenarios and functions are adequately tested. With a solid test plan in place, an organization can effectively prioritize its automation efforts and ensure comprehensive coverage, minimizing the risk of overlooking critical aspects of the application.

Furthermore, strong testing processes provide standardized procedures for test case design, execution, and result analysis. This consistency ensures that the testing automation team follows best practices, adheres to established guidelines, and maintains a high level of quality and accuracy in their testing activities. By following a systematic approach, firms can confidently rely on automation results to make informed decisions about the application's quality and readiness for deployment.

Dependency Management

There are several dependencies which require proactive mapping, with either direct resolution or meaningful mitigation, to support a healthy automated quality assurance experience. Some of the more common and high priority dependencies are associated with data and environments. Clean and reliable data is a fundamental dependency for implementing automation successfully. It is the fuel that drives the automation engine and plays a crucial role in producing accurate and meaningful test results.

Test data configured to mimic real-world scenarios replicates realistic user interactions with the developed applications. With compliant data, automated tests can be executed without encountering false failures, and/or false positives. When working with flawed or unreliable data, automation scripts will likely encounter unexpected issues or fail to produce accurate results. Quality data eliminates inconsistencies, errors, and duplicates that can hinder the effectiveness of automation.

Furthermore, clean and reliable data enables better analysis and troubleshooting during the testing process. When automation scripts produce results that are based on accurate data, it becomes easier to identify and isolate issues or defects within the application. This expedites the debugging and resolution process, saving valuable time and resources. Data management practices, including version control and documentation, contribute to the overall traceability and repeatability of automated tests. Teams can track changes in test data, compare results between different test runs, and reproduce specific test scenarios with confidence. This traceability fosters transparency and enables effective collaboration between testers, developers, and stakeholders involved in the automation process.

Available, stable, and release compliant environments are also fundamental to supporting effective automation implementations. Overall, environments which are managed effectively provide the foundation for consistent, reliable, and efficient QA processes. They help ensure that test results are accurate, defects can be reproduced, and certification processes can be optimized, and eventually automated. Therefore, organizations should strive to establish and maintain available, stable, and release compliant environments to enhance the effectiveness of their quality assurance and automation practices.

Tool Selection and Maintenance

The process of adopting testing automation includes the critical task of selecting the right automation tools which align with project requirements, technology stack, and testing objectives. The choice of tools directly impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the automation process. By evaluating different options and identifying the tool that best suits a company’s needs, organizations can ensure a seamless and successful implementation of automation.

There is a wide range of automation tools available in the market. Some of the leading choices include Cyara, Selenium, and Hammer. Kenway recently partnered with Cyara, a leading automated CX assurance platform. As Kenway is tool agnostic, we do not recommend one vendor vs another based on our own relationships or partnerships; we help our clients choose the right solution based on their unique paradigm and requirements. In this case we worked with the client to build requirements and validate that it was the right choice for their needs and would recommend that all organizations take the same steps to ensure the tool selected is the best fit.

Once the tools are selected, ongoing maintenance becomes essential for the long-term sustainability of the automation effort. Regular updates, patches, and enhancements keep the tools compatible with the ever-evolving technology landscape.

Maintenance activities also involve monitoring tool performance, addressing any issues or bugs, and ensuring the tools remain reliable and efficient in supporting the automated testing process. Proper tool maintenance also includes staying informed about the latest advancements in automation technology, allowing teams to leverage new features and capabilities to enhance their automated testing efforts.

Moreover, tool maintenance encompasses providing training and skill development opportunities for the testing team. Ensuring that testers are proficient in utilizing the selected automation tools is crucial for maximizing their potential. By equipping the team with the necessary skills, teams can effectively design and execute test cases, analyze test results, and fully leverage the capabilities of the testing automation tools.

Testing Automation Governance

Governance establishes and ensures the maintenance of standardized methodologies, procedures, and guidelines for testing automation, test case design, execution, and result analysis across different projects and teams. By providing a framework for standardization, governance facilitates collaboration, reduces errors, and improves the overall quality of testing – automated or not. Without a foundation in good governance, the ability to reap the benefit of automation becomes extremely difficult.

Governance plays a crucial role in risk management. A well governed program identifies and mitigates risks associated with autonomous certification practices (e.g., data privacy and security, test environment stability, tool selection, regulatory requirements, and industry standards). By implementing controls and protocols, governance functions proactively address potential risks and minimize disruptions or failures in the testing process.

Governance promotes accountability and transparency in testing activities. It establishes clear roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders. By defining and enforcing these roles, governance fosters transparency, trust, and effective collaboration among team members, leading to better outcomes in automated testing. It also facilitates knowledge management by capturing and sharing best practices, lessons learned, and automation artifacts. Managers are better equipped to ensure that valuable insights, tools, and resources are documented, stored, and made accessible to relevant stakeholders. This knowledge management aspect of governance promotes learning, innovation, and efficiency in testing, especially when automated.

Change Management

A well targeted and streamlined change management approach will help guarantee adoption of automation. Each team impacted by the enhanced processes to support automation will need to understand their roles and responsibilities to ensure the organization achieves the highest ROI. Each stakeholder must have a clear understanding of how their role impacts the success of automation. Governance must be equipped to validate that automation processes are being consistently leveraged, with any associated risks and issues being quickly resolved or mitigated.

Kenway understands that automation is an iterative process. As automation initiatives progress, it's common for organizations to revisit and refine their testing strategy, governance, dependency management, and change management practices. Continuous evaluation, adaptation, and improvement are also crucial to optimize the benefits of automation over time.

How Kenway Can Help

When engaging with a client interested in automation, Kenway will assess processes, dependencies, and governance prior to conducting an analysis on automation tools. By identifying gaps in the fundamentals early, we can create an effective plan to prioritize and address issues which ultimately support the delivery of a highly functional automated testing framework. We guide our clients through automation orchestration, model adoption options, and tool selection processes, ensuring that the client’s unique needs are met. Throughout this journey, we focus on the impacts to the existing teams, unique personas, and processes to ensure a smooth transition via a well-defined change management strategy. Automation is a powerful tool, but only when organizations make the proper investments to effectively integrate and nurture it. At Kenway, we pride ourselves on having helped clients maximize the return on their automation investment.

If you are struggling with your manual testing, having difficulties implementing automated testing, or simply have interest in automated testing, we would like to hear from you at [email protected].