Call Center books are a useful resource to ramp up with standard industry practices

Good sales practices are hard. They lead to market success and can keep a product alive. Yet, not only sales people have to sell. In today’s fast changing world, many companies give sales tasks to more than just sales people. Products in niche markets or new comers to a crowded market, have it even harder. Tikal Networks sees this difficulty with many customers. We see both failures and the successes in sales. What we noticed more and more lately, is how some companies use call centers effectively to close sales. This sales technique is used together with digital campaigns using e-mail, web advertising, social media and blogging. Companies from financial services (trading, FOREX), language tools (translation services and dictionaries) to enterprise computing (hosting, custom development) are all selling effectively by gathering leads with digital campaigns and closing with outbound voice (VoIP) campaigns. Integrating voice with digital campaigns is not new, Indian call centers targeting American businesses, are at it for more then a decade. The new trend is showing smaller companies using more sophisticated digital campaigns to generate leads. Also, more focused products, from broad range of companies are being offered to a more narrow audience. For example, translation and dictionary products are being offered to writers and bloggers only.

It may seem obvious to close sales using sales agents over the phone as follow up to lead gathering campaigns. What’s new, is small companies entering this field. You may have seen the pictures of large rooms with hundreds of agents using VoIP to sell products. In countries like India and Canada, whole industries support sales for US and European companies. The trend for smaller companies using the same techniques is a natural. Today’s easily acquired sales tools from CRM sales management like SalesForce.com to hosted Call Centers are considered “off-the-shelf” items. The services are available to anyone and are packaged by volume size (call minutes) or features. The most challenging hurdle is starting out: setting up and managing the operation. Luckily there are freelancer (contract services) resources like ODesk (call center) and Elance which list hundreds of companies and individuals with telemarketing and contact center services. If you need someone on your premises, there are individuals who can help either in person or via teleconferencing. There are also more and better resources from books (do a search on Amazon for “call center” or “contact center”) all the way to blogs and social media groups on Linked-In. All these can get you going quickly and get a good sense of how to run a call center without taking months to feel at ease.

Another key strategy we see in today’s fast changing landscape is “everyone sells and everyone supports” customers. From hospitals which essentially support customers all the time (even a department secretary needs access to test result dates and appointment schedules) to hotel personal handling calls from tour operators (hotel bookings involve events, schedules and other details). This makes Call Center features a critical element in every worker’s skill set and capability. We see this even in areas like manufacturing. In today’s “Just In Time” delivery reality, not just the truck drivers and warehouse managers are responsible to shipping an order, production and scheduling managers need to keep up with updates and customer requests. This is where the total call center features for everyone comes into play. Tikal Networks today handles many disciplines with many different needs to support a company attitude needed to succeed and rise over and above customer expectations. We are no longer surprised when an IT manager requests full Call Center and PBX features on every phone with full flexible control over features (by department and employee). This kind of support and flexibility comes natural to Tikal Networks.

Tikal Networks’ Experience

Tikal Networks brings nine years of call center equipment and operation experience to every new operator. Our experience gives call center managers the advantage gained over hundreds of deployments. In addition, Tikal Networks’ systems gained feedback from thousands of call center agents making millions of calls. Tikal’s Crystal Call Center system uses Asterisk open source as a base platform. Asterisk is the number one telephony platform today with the largest installed base in both PBX and Call Center use. In addition to a solid technical capability, Tikal Networks’ support staff is experienced in supporting hundreds of mission critical sites. Tikal Networks customers are located globally and use a wide range of features. This gives new call center customers the assurance of getting started quickly with a proven supplier. Tikal Networks also offers systems in both hosted (cloud) and locally installed formats. Tikal can also transfer one installation from local placement to a hosted one without any changes to the system or it’s data! All this translates into strong business application integration capability. When it comes to getting all your applications in front of sales, marketing or support agents, Tikal Networks will get you there quickly and reliably.

Israel's Ministry of Finance is a dynamic, world class regulatory organization. Tikal Networks is adding a financial service feature set product to the standard Crystal Call Center. First time regulatory coverage in the financial services industry.

The financial sector is going through a dynamic shift in customer service requirements. One of the positive outcome of the ailing financial services sector is better regulation, more transparency and focus on excellent customer service. Customer service at a true top notch level, is not something the financial industry was concerned about, until now. This attitude is changing rapidly. Both regulators (i.e. government agencies) and financial services providers (i.e. mutual funds, insurance) are taking note and acting on the need for strong customer service capability. One way to see this change is in the guidance from the Israeli ministry of finance. Recently, the ministry in the form of a notice, issued guidelines on customer service requirements. The ministry has set waiting times for call center incoming calls as well as guidelines for call back times in case a call center can not answer a call immediately. This notice, to take affect a year from now (January 1, 2013) essentially assures all financial services (insurance, mutual funds, other savings funds) in giving timely and useful service via phone. Financial services, such as mutual funds and executive (optional) savings funds are growing rapidly in Israel. A strong economy and decades of growth in the middle class savings rate is driving a strong financial industry sector. Yet this growth seems to have come at the expense of customer service quality. Israeli government regulatory agencies, using mostly European standards with American experience, is keen to assure the local industry operates securely and effectively. This also goes for customer service standards. Until this ministry of finance notice, many financial services companies were not required to give full phone customer service as part of their standard operating procedures. With the recent decline in financial services confidence in Europe and the US, Israeli industry and government bodies are acting together to assure better outlook in the local market. In general, Israel is playing catch up with regard to effective customer service. This new guidance from the ministry of finance is seen as an opportunity to continue the ability of Israel’s financial services industry to give world class level services. Phone service is now going to be a standard requirement to operate under Israeli regulation.

Tikal Networks is adding unique proprietary Call Center features to the financial services industry. The first feature, a key support and tracking capability, enables customers to receive call center recording directly to their personal mailbox. Once a call is made to the financial service call center, a copy of the recording is mailed as an attachment to the customer. This will ensure complete tracking of the call and a clear and simple transaction archive. With the popularity of audio format in both personal computers and cell phones, a clear recording file is a great way for people to keep records of their financial transactions. This will assure both client and company have an audio recording of every call. This feature will virtually eliminate issues of when a customer called and what was said and done. Now, neither side can complain of mistake in providing an explanation or a missed or erroneous transaction.

A second feature adds quality assurance capability in real time. Once a customer finishes the call, he is given the option to be transferred to auto quality survey, the survey results are displayed in real time. Customer experience, in a case of poor satisfaction, become an alert to Call Center manager. This will give managers the ability to address issues as they occur. In the past, quality feedback was requested at random, usually weeks or months after a customer made a call. These two features are developed and tested with current financial services companies using Tikal’s Crystal Call Center product.

Tikal Networks’s financial services feature set will be marketed as a purpose built package to companies in the financial services industry and banking. These features are designed with financial services customers. The targeting of specific needs in vertical industries is not a new concept at Tikal Networks. In the past, Tikal Networks added key features to call centers servicing customers on an outsource basis (companies without their own call center facility.) Tikal Networks will continue to offer industry specific capabilities to give each user base superior user experience. Tikal Networks as both an integrator and developer is uniquely positioned to offer a complete solution to customers with unique demands. This gives Tikal customers the advantage of easy to operate systems with strong competitive advantage. Our policy is to develop the best features for the most demanding situations without the need to master complex operating environments. Tikal also offers leading edge open source solutions which are easily integrated with any purpose built or proprietary application.

Clear and simple user interface in an advanced system: Tikal Networks refined the interface over 8 years / © Tikal Networks 2011

Tikal Networks started designing Crystal Call Center eight years ago. In the early days of Call Center deployment, user interface was not a key design concern. First, supervisors and executives simply wanted to manage as many agents using the free VoIP capability. Over the years, with hundreds (then thousands) of users, Tikal Network designers quickly noticed agent, supervisor and executive productivity dependent on interface design. Today, Crystal Call Center is still evolving into a highly capable system with simple interfaces. Each feature has the main controls: buttons, status, lists (queues, departments, agents, supervisors) and top real time activities as the main screen. Most of the work is done in the section called CTI (Computer-Telephony Interface). Here are all the screens related to calls, statistics and real time activities. This is what agents and supervisors do most of the time when running the call center.

The first time setup and operating configuration is done in the setup screens. These you will need to learn a few concepts of a queue, an agent, a department and other setup parameters. For the most part, the integrator will configure the system the first time. An experienced integration engineer will get your system up and calling in a few hours. If you do this for the first time, Tikal Networks is setting up instructional videos on this site and on You Tube (see channel here).

Once you are going with running your call center, take a look at the advanced configuration and real time statistical screens. Here is where an advanced call center will give you more features than any system available today. The advanced management features give agents and supervisors full visibility and control on each call. A queue is a list of calls, incoming or outgoing. Here each agent is assigned a call and the call can be moved. You also have full control over recording a conversation. Real time call status, ability to listen or “whisper” (talk between agents and supervisors while a call is taking place), moving calls from a queue with long delay to one available, are just some of the features which make your call center run effectively. Here is where you can see how call centers have changed the way companies are doing business. Not only do you see resource efficiency, also strategic and tactical operation never seen before. Finally, all activities are recorded and are available anytime. Real time statistics enable you to see each agent, each queue and even each department. A marketing department working on new orders and work together with a support department and now coordinate calls from and to one customer. This is a key feature among many others.

At Tikal Networks we believe in getting your hands on the product. Once you see how it works on your own screen with your own people, there is no turning back. We see day in and day out, how impressed first time users when starting to run a new system. Then we see how supervisors and upper management use the call center statistics and how strategies slowly evolve. Then we see how companies upgrade their image and capability in managing voice communication. Then we see how companies gain advantage over their competitors. Finally we see how companies adopt the call center mentality into all their operations. Operations and executives can use the same tools as sales people and support engineers. There is no reason to give the best communication tools just to the front line workers. We are trying to spread the word on how to use the call center idea in every function a company runs. This idea is just emerging now and we are quickly seeing how companies evolve into using advanced call tools in creative and effective ways.

How big do you need to be before installing your own Tikal Networks IP-PBX? from: freedigitalphotos.net

Today’s Asterisk™ platform as an IP-PBX or call center, is targeted more towards medium size enterprise installations. On the low end, up to 50 extensions PBX installations (or 20 call agents), hosted solutions and integrated hardware systems serve the needs adequately. In the higher end, 1,000 extensions PBX and 200 call agents, large legacy systems from the traditional telephony suppliers still hold their ground. This leaves the “middle ground” for Asterisk™. This brings up the issue of how do you size up your IP-PBX, Call Center or legacy upgrade Asterisk project? Essentially, when does it make sense for an IT manager to engage with an Asterisk integrator? What are the key factors when considering a professionally integrated Asterisk installation?

Most Asterisk PBX and contact center customers seek a professional integrator like Tikal Networks only when a project is needed. By “needed” I mean operationally needed to support business operations in a short-range of time, almost immediately (at the most 3 months). When the current system is not effective enough. When the operation needs more extensions (call center stations), or more effective management to increase call center efficiency. This brings up the question what can the Asterisk platform bring managers operational efficiency. Breaking down operational efficiency, look at the following size factors:

If the cost of adding a 100 seat call center runs at $50,000 and takes two months. How will you operation benefit from a $500 per seat complete cost? What will be the time-span of investment recovery? If you already have a partial IP telephony infrastructure or handsets, the cost will be lower. If you are integrating or upgrading an older analog system, the cost of a new system will bring more benefits than simply using the old system in new ways (i.e. integrating more CRM features into an analog or hardware build call center). Some of these are strategic questions. These are less quantitative and are harder to justify just in dollars spent.

This brings up the question what can the Asterisk platform bring managers who are looking for strategic advantage. If we are talking strategic and not tactical, it means calculating ROI not based strictly on operational benefit. Now justification has to be calculated on a smaller installation. If you give everyone in your organization call center features, what benefit would it give your company? If you have seamless global extension dialing, what the increase in phone use bring to management and staff? If you add BI, CRM and ERP integration. Then add more management features, like statistics and immediate call routing control, now a department with 50 people or a call center with 15 agents may be a good target for a professionally integrated Asterisk installation. The benefits of a leading telecom system are so strategic, that sometimes IT managers calculate based only on operational improvement. Sometimes it takes a large installation that is hard to maintain by IT and telephony technicians to justify a new Asterisk upgrade. But that does not have to be the case. Tikal Networks regularly meets customers who are willing to install a new system for just one department (marketing and sales). Then quickly realized that everyone in the company would benefit from such a system. So you can go at it in incremental steps.

Tikal Network's ™ Crystal IP-PBX, a mission critical enterprise solution

Asterisk™ as a IP-PBX and telephony platform covers a wide range of uses. From small offices with a few extensions to companies with many locations and thousands of extensions. Asterisk™’s wide coverage gives rise to specialization in many areas. Tikal Networks™ specializes in enterprise deployments. Entry point for standard off-the-shelf PBX is 100 extensions. For call centers it is 20 agent positions. Enterprise Asterisk installations require focus on mission critical elements: high availability, complete reliability, advanced management features, scalability on any feature, integration with legacy systems and most crucially support no matter what is needed.

With enterprise level products come also critical issues such as cost, professional skill level of related systems and enterprise level planning and deployment. Large mission critical operations need to be planned, installed and run on a professional level. This includes technical resources (headcount, experienced technicians) and the ability of business managers to define and manage system installation. Tikal Networks brings many years and hundreds of enterprise installation experience. To an enterprise call center or telephony manager, this is a crucial element in choosing a supplier. While many integrators can design and install a large system, when it comes to quickly getting a system and the users up to speed, experience is the one differentiator many suppliers can’t bring to the table.

What do enterprise telephony suppliers bring to customers? How do you quickly and reliably qualify an enterprise telephony supplier? Tikal’s answer is divided into these areas:

Overall, enterprise product design, installation, support and maintenance is a specialty field. Without experience in the field, companies that really need enterprise reliability, scale and flexibility will not get all the benefits of an experienced supplier like Tikal Networks. Call our technical or sales people and get started in the process of understanding and benefiting from today’s enterprise telephony products.