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| Taking Care of eTelecare's IP-driven Customer Interactions |
An interview with Rick Pusag, Director, Information Technologies, and Wilkins Tan, Quality Manager, eTelecare Global Solutions
"NICE was the only provider that could provide a solution that fit our VoIP needs."
Company Snapshot
Founded in 1999, eTelecare is a leading contact center outsourcer that provides a broad variety of customer services, including inbound sales, outbound sales and technical support for market leaders in consumer technology, financial services, telecommunications, business services, travel and other industries.
eTelecare has 11 global centers and employs over 7,000 personnel, providing services onshore in the U.S. and offshore in the Philippines. The company's vision of providing World Class Worldwide service has been recognized by clients and the industry, having won 38 major industry awards in the past 6 years and having been recognized by Inc Magazine in 2005 as the 50th fastest growing public companies in the U.S. eTelecare's customer list includes Dell and American Express.
Why did you select NICE for your Philippine contact centers?
We decided to go with NICE when we decided to move into a VoIP environment. The previous system could not support this environment. NICE was the only provider that could provide a solution that fit our VoIP needs. NICE was also the best fit for us based on cost/functionality.
Why did you decide to move to VoIP?
Primarily, because of cost. Working with VoIP is a much more cost effective option than traditional TDM. Initially we had a switch to switch technology, one switch in the US and another switch in our local call centers in the Philippines. This can be a pretty expensive proposition. Now we have about 2000 of our NICE seats on VoIP, deployed in 3 locations, at a much lower cost of ownership and administration.
How does having NICE's VoIP solutions help you manage eTelecare's distributed environment?
The NICE solution enables the distribution of information. This makes it much easier for our QA supervisors to manage their own recordings. Since they don't have to go to a different site, they can do it through a decentralized approach.
Do you have calls in the Philippines that are transferred to the States?
Yes, we have an arrangement with our clients who require us to upload a certain number of calls per week for QA purposes. This is a value add we bring to our clients: the ability to monitor the quality of service their customers are receiving, without actually having to come to the Philippines. This is something that is very valuable in terms of cost efficiency and saving time. We have clients who also request access to the system, and NICE is web-based, which is very helpful in offering access to our clients and colleagues in the US.
What are some of the QA parameters that are evaluated?
We look at the interaction side, how the agent interacted with the customer, for example - courtesy and communication skills, more of the soft-skill side. We also look at the call content side - did the agent say what was needed to be said or not. It is important for us and for our clients to look at whether the agent complied with process and requirements.
How has NICE helped your agents hone these skills?
Being able to play back the actual call and have the agent listen to it is a tremendous coaching tool. The other important capability is being able to correlate calls to captured screen shots. This is something that you can use for audits, to really look at the efficiency of the agent, in terms of going through the system or for security issues, for example - are they accessing applications or systems that are intended just for them, and the like. In terms of efficiency and coaching, NICE is extremely helpful.
What are some of the other challenges you face as an off-shore outsourcers?
One of the main challenges is building of the credibility of agents. When large clients from the US think about outsourcing to the Philippines or elsewhere, they don't just look at the cost. One of the things that they look at, at the end of the day, is customer satisfaction, and consequently - the caliber of our agents and their capabilities in delivering high levels of customer satisfaction.
How does NICE help you overcome this challenge?
We can provide our clients this confidence with the help of our NICE solution. With NICE we can gather the data that we need to send to our clients, and which they use to approve whether or not our agents are meeting their standards. We can easily provide our clients with two calls, for example, before and after coaching calls - to demonstrate that customer satisfaction has improved.
How else does NICE help you position yourself with clients?
We are a mission-critical operation. We have clients that require a particular number of recordings per agent per week. This is something that we must meet. If we don't, we're out of compliance. There are also some new clients who are coming on board who require 100% recording for various reasons, for example for sales certification. Financial services clients also require 100% recording, for them it is mandated by law.
With NICE we can guarantee this for our clients. One of the great things about the NICE solution is that once it's configured, you can forget about it, so-to-speak, because you know that it's working. This is critical for us because the NICE solution is such an important part of our offering to clients.
What do you plan to do next with NICE?
We are now going to move our call center and the NICE solution to the Avaya Call Manager API (CMAPI) environment. This will make it easier for us to maintain the call center on the IP side, as well as make it possible to eliminate a potential central point of failure.
What are some of the benefits of moving to an Avaya Call Manager API environment with NICE?
It's a solution that was created together by both Avaya and NICE. Integration between the two is tighter; it is a seamless solution for us.
From a cost point of view - I believe that it will be a more cost effective solution to implement because we will have a centralized recorder and it will be easier to configure. Today we have to work closely with the telephony and networking group to make sure that our NICE solution is not impacted whenever we make changes in those two other domains. With full integration between NICE and Avaya, we won't have to do that anymore.
The NICE solution for Avaya's CMAPI environment is an excellent example of how two vendors can come together and create an integrative solution, which is now a real plug-and-play solution for us.
"The NICE solution for Avaya's CMAPI environment is an excellent example of how two vendors can come together and create an integrative solution, which is now a real plug-and-play solution for us."
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Company Snapshot
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Founded in 1999, eTelecare is a leading contact center outsourcer that provides a broad variety of customer services, including inbound sales, outbound sales and technical support for market leaders in consumer technology, financial services, telecommunications, business services, travel and other industries.
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