Case Study – E-Plus: More quality and less cost for outbound campaigns
E-Plus Group, a German mobile telecoms operator and subsidiary of Telefónica Germany, wanted to streamline to a solution which simultaneously brings together all campaigns and contact centres into one manageable platform. The answer was “Outbound Communicator”, a cloud-based outbound solution hosted by Enghouse Interactive, which is helping E-Plus to lead the way in its chosen markets.
E-Plus manages engaging outbound campaigns from several contact centres. The outsourced service providers originally used inherently different interfaces, which meant that inconsistency, inefficiency and performance issues were unavoidable, thus, making it impossible to compare reporting and performance overviews for different campaigns and contact centres. Similarly, with respect to compliance, the company needed to follow specific legal requirements in the way it carried out “outbound predictive dialling”. The challenge was that it required a complex outbound and quality management solution which enabled key metrics across all systems to be compared.
“We therefore looked for a platform that could deliver optimal sales results for various campaigns for a variety of our outbound partners while at the same time making sure we took quality, cost savings, flexibility, and customer satisfaction into account.” says Christian Tromm, Team Manager Telemarketing E-Plus Mobilfunk, a subsidiary of Telefónica Germany.
One centralised platform in the cloud: The result was Enghouse Interactive’s Outbound Communicator (Elsbeth) solution, a user-friendly outbound communications solution, capable of supporting effective and efficient telephony campaign management, with Real Time Speech Analytics to improve quality and compliance.
E-Plus provides an outsourced call centre service, with a framework of campaigns centrally in the cloud with a complete outbound solution. The call centre’s original ICT systems were therefore no longer necessary and the outbound solution remained on the server, which was now accessible in the cloud. This has allowed individual call centres to obtain information/ data for their respective campaigns without the need to set up or run special training for the agents. All that is now required is a telephone and a computer with sufficient broadband connectivity.
“Qualitatively, it is now easier to implement marketing requirements with the right technical interfaces to track and monitor activity. And we are also now able to replace and change outbound campaigns relatively quickly and monitor them effectively,” says Christian Tromm.
Advantage of Quality – Live adjustments for compliance: An additional advantage offers Enghouse Interactive’s Real Time Speech Analytics (RTSA). This allows agents / supervisors to monitor calls in real-time to verify certain specifications, such as whether the agent speaks a defined phrase or keyword, for example.
This is particularly important when verifying a contract, ensuring compliance and that relevant information is correctly understood. For example, when a customer wants to buy something and the agent prepares the contract, they will talk through the details of the form, while RTSA runs in the background, providing the agent with feedback. They also have a list of the key features of the contract and these are ticked as mentioned. If the agent has forgotten information this is flagged and must be corrected immediately. This gives them the opportunity to reconfirm the details and ensure that the customer has really understood their commitment.
In this way, RTSA continuously offers the agents self-coaching. Instead of a trainer monitoring a few samples of an agent’s telephone calls as part of a batch once a week and providing training on what they did wrong, the agent receives feedback in real-time. RTSA software informs the agent, where their deficiencies lie and what needs to be corrected immediately, resulting in greater efficiencies. “It is a much easier way of ensuring to be compliant,” notes Christian Tromm of E-Plus.
The software also enables supervisors to determine the tempo, volume, and emotion of the conversation from the perspective both of the agent and the customer on the call.
For example, in the live environment, “RTSA” can recognise the issues and indicates to the agent, as appropriate, if the participants are talking too quietly or if the agent is not letting the caller speak.
Cost savings and quality increases: E-Plus also needs to verify calls manually across the different contact centres.
“Due to the use of RTSA, the amount of staff needed for this task, is ‘drastically reduced” says Konrad Kunze, product manager Enghouse Interactive.
As RTSA has already checked a number of the key components of a contract, this information does not need to be individually checked. Thus, the remainder of the review process is accelerated as there is less information to double-check. The cost of personnel required for contract audits drops significantly. However, the quality of the process is increased due to the absolutely reliable controls of RTSA. “For example instead of five people, you may only need two to check the daily conversations, which in itself drives even greater efficiency and cost gains,” says Konrad Kunze.
The contact centres use cloud-based speech analysis software meaning you can access from any location from a simple webpage. This means that all relevant reports and data can be kept in one central location and easily be retrieved by E-Plus.
The future: “For us, the central outbound dialler platform is clearly the way forward”, says Christian Tromm of E-Plus. It’s the flexibility and quality of technical and commercial processes and in addition, the direct cost savings, through the interface reducing the direct telephone connection to the E-Plus network and the short-term connection of new contact centre services to complex campaigns.
“In the future, we will optimise the cost-saving effect of “RTSA” and deliver a simultaneous increase in quality. We’ll give the coaches information to help guide agents, and improve training,” says Konrad Kunze. This will give them visibility of agent progress so they can determine what areas agents need to improve on and which agents need more focused training. Research by bfkm Fingerhut + Seidel, consulting has determined that RTSA can make your agents 30% more efficient, a huge cost saving.
Additional Information
For additional information on E-Plus visit their Website
For additional information on Enghouse Interactive visit their Website or alternatively visit their Company Profile
