October 26th, 2011 by goodsense
Categories: CONTACT, Case Studies, Customers
Tags: awards, email
Client success always makes the Datasquirt team happy so we were thrilled this month when Wokingham Council were again recognised as the top public services call centre for email communications in the country. We are particularly stoked that their call centre manager, Sarah Barrows, cites the Datasquirt CONTACTTM call centre software – and the efficient email handling it gives them – as one of the reasons for their repeated success.
In the 2005 book, Freedom from Command and Control, John Seddon uses the term “failure demand” to describe calls to contact centers triggered by a company’s failure to do a thing correctly for a customer: “A failure to do something – turn up, call back, send something…causes the customer to make a further demand on the system. A failure to do something right – not solve a problem, send out forms that customers have difficulty with and so on – similarly create demand and creates extra work.”
Seddon cites a UK bank for whom failure demand was so widespread it created almost half their inbound calls.
The 2011 Contact Centre Decision Makers’ Guide by Contact Babel references unanswered email as a classic example of failure demand. The slow response prompts customers to call instead (first-stage failure demand). Later, the email will be responded to unnecessarily, as the customer got an answer when they rang (second-stage failure demand). This redundant work slows handling of other live messages in the queue, “creating a vicious circle of failure demand.”
By improving email response times contact centres don’t just improve satisfaction, they become more efficient, supporting improved profitability within the organization as a whole. As Alan Moscrop of Glasses Direct explains in this video, faster email handling, and greater success, follows as one of the effects of implementing CONTACTTM call center software.
To find out more about the role CONTACTTM could play in reducing failure demand in your call centre click here or contact us today. link to contact page
September 28th, 2011 by goodsense
Categories: Uncategorized
A recurring theme in voter feedback in the UK’s Call Centre Helper Best Technology awards (in which Datasquirt won first place) was the ease of use of the CONTACTTM call centre software.
Datasquirt voted Best Technology provider, Sept 2011
“The software is easy to use, intuitive, the reporting suite is excellent”
It’s easy to underestimate the importance of usability in evaluating contact centre solutions, but we find it is a key driver in successful deployment. We asked Datasquirt CTO Kieron Lawson for his strategies on ensuring CONTACT stays easy to use:
“A lot of it’s about focus. We’re always thinking about the user when we’re improving or adding functionality. Our goal is to minimise the training a user needs and to minimise help requests. We seek to make the user interface for CONTACT intuitive, so people can understand how to operate it based on previous experience and common sense. This makes deployment fast for our clients and reduces costs and user error.”
“The other key thing is our lean development approach. We don’t hide Datasquirt developers away behind teams of business analysts. Our team talk to clients and partners, understand their business situations and user needs then apply that learning as we enhance the CONTACT platform. These close user feedback loops give us quite an agile and customer-centric culture, rather than a technology-centric culture.”
When we asked Kieron about the most important requirements for delivery he had this to say.
“Skill level, experience and instinct. Our development team have a high level of expertise, substantial experience and great problem solving instincts. The calibre of the team is a major reason we’ve kept our HQ in New Zealand, when our clients are world-wide. The country has a good technical skill base, supports a high quality of life for our staff and, of course has the best rugby team anywhere.”
Underlying the CTO and the technical team focus is a company-wide emphasis on making it easier for Call Centre managers and their team to communicate using the channels that complement voice. We’re delighted to have received more votes than any other contact centre technology in the awards – our thanks if you were among our supporters – but what delights us most is the great customer service our clients can offer their customers, day and night, thanks to CONTACTTM
If you’d like to find out more about ways more usable software can help your call centre, please give us a call.
August 31st, 2011 by goodsense
Categories: CONTACT, Case Studies, Retail
Tags: Call centre software, case studies, retail
What’s helping shift more shoe, stamp and spectacle SKUs?
In challenging times, retailers are turning to new communication channels to help lift sales. They are also refocusing on service delivery, realising if they don’t look after a potential or previous customer, another retailer will.
Examples of retailers taking new steps to improve their customer service include The Post Office who have deployed our call centre software to help them better respond to queries and drive more custom in-store – to buy stamps and other supplies.
And on the other side of the world, in New Zealand, Number One Shoes are using CONTACTTM call centre software in very similar ways.
Like Glasses Direct, they are enjoying business gains without increasing their headcount or investing in new hardware.
At Glasses Direct, they route inbound emails by type and priority. Their customer service team can see a complete customer message history to avoid double-ups or missed messages. Easy to use templates and real-time reporting have driven business efficiency, cutting response times from a up to a week to eight hours or less – a 600% improvement.
More immediate responses moved more customers to purchases more quickly.
“You have to be able to respond to customers as quickly and efficiently as possible so the biggest benefit we saw immediately was a reduction in response times.”
Alan Moscrop, Customer Services Manager, Glasses Direct
Read the Glasses Direct case study online here.
Call centre software is helping retailers:
- Improve email response times and quality of handling
- Automate SMS and email responses
- Offer Web Chat in their online stores
- Manage Twitter dialogues professionally
- Track all customer interactions
- Respond to customers in the channel of their choice
- Improve customer service in dozens of other ways
Of course every retail business – bricks and mortar or online – is unique, but we’re proud to be helping retailers as diverse as the Post Office, Number One Shoes and Glasses Direct sell more through their online and offline stores. If you’d like to find out more about ways to improve retail sales or service, please give us a call.
Or visit www.datasquirt.com to find out more about CONTACT.
July 4th, 2011 by goodsense
Categories: Case Studies, cloud SMS
Tags: Call centre software, case studies, sms
While social media buzz continues to dominate business news, a proven hero continues to liberate call centres world-wide; SMS (Short Message Service or txt messaging).
SMS integration with CONTACT
With the first SMS sent in 1992, SMS has grown to enjoy a near ubiquitous status, accessible on the humblest handset and the shiniest smartphone, worldwide. SMS has an immediacy and responsiveness that can transform communications. Many initial commercial applications were promotional and increasingly call centres are using CONTACT to support customer service queries, but at Datasquirt we’re also finding our clients are making SMS work for them in innovative ways, across the enterprise.
Here’s five examples of different deployments:
Safer Security guards – ADT made it quicker and easier for their security guards to check in every hour, replacing voice calls with an automated SMS service. The guards send a txt message code to let ADT know their status. ADT manage the process using CONTACT, with certain codes triggering call centre support. Not only does ADT save money, using SMS instead of voice, but the more efficient system has made the security guards safer. Read more
Quieter neighbourhoods – Following the success in replacing some voice calls with SMS, ADT uses CONTACT SMS to replace faxes used to manage noise complaints for several Councils. Where faxes used to be sent in batches, complaint alerts are now sent by TXT, boosting the company’s ability to respond to calls, report back on the results of its actions and monitor performance. Read more
A more mobilised and motivated salesforce – Amway uses CONTACT SMS to communicate with its entire Australasian representative network. During the peak month-end period Amway uses SMS to keep the extensive independent team up to date on their status, encourage more sales and to congratulate the top performers. Amway claims their success is due to the cost effectiveness, speed, efficiency, interactivity and fun-nature of the channel. It’s proven particularly strong with a network that’s out and about all the time and has grown sales. Read more
Better payments record – Northwards Housing Association (UK) and The Ministry of Justice (NZ) are two examples of organisations using SMS to improve payments. The non-confrontational nature of SMS has proved effective for both organisations, encouraging better communication from message recipients. The ability to schedule reminders in CONTACT, and see communication histories, makes payment administration easier to manage. Ministry of Justice agents using SMS collected over 15 per cent more than the average contact centre agent and achieved higher cash collection rates every month. Read more about the Ministry of Justice or using SMS or watch the Northwards Housing video.
Easier ordering – element14 (formerly Farnell) are using SMS to respond to customer enquiries. Customers can have product detail, stock levels and pricing sent to their mobile phone along with a link to a mobile web page to view detailed information including product descriptions, technical product datasheets and pricing that are essential in design engineers’ daily work. The new element14 mobile service is implemented in Australia, China, India, Malaysia and New Zealand. Read more
It’s not often a communication channel delivers both better results and reduced cost, but with SMS that is an experience common to many organisations. Contact us to find out more about deploying SMS in your business.
May 24th, 2011 by goodsense
Categories: CONTACT, Call centre software, Government, SaaS, cloud SMS, cloud email, cloud software
Tags: call centre, cloud, email, sms, software
Cloud call centre software – Handling customer queries on the bus ride home
Language moves fast. It can be hard to keep up. Especially when one term replaces another. The latest language innovation in software has been the rapid adoption of the word ‘ cloud ‘ to describe the provision of Software as a Service ( SaaS) and other solutions accessed over the internet and hosted on someone else’s servers.
The term cloud computing has become mainstream in business circles inside 12-months, replacing SaaS and related terms in online searches. Infact, a search for cloud on Google now delivers so many cloud computing results the first to reference the actual fluffy vapour stuff – a fan tribute to clouds with some stunning photos – is relegated to 10th place.
Media articles have proliferated, hailing a new era of technology. But the term is newer than the approach.
Datasquirt have been offering cloud based call centre software since 2004. From our early days of offering cloud email and cloud SMS we’ve expanded to bring clients cloud web chat, cloud fax and cloud social CRM.
When Sarah Barrows, Head of Customer Service and Administration, Wokingham Borough Council, presented at the recent Call Centre Summit in the UK, she talked about why using cloud email, cloud SMS, cloud web chat and cloud social CRM works so well for them.
Here’s what Sarah said:
“One of the major benefits of using CONTACT over other services is it’s Software as a Service – it’s hosted elsewhere so there’s no massive infrastructure costs for us. It’s all managed separately so all of the technical side is handled away from our offices and we don’t have to worry about any of that. And it’s really efficient. We haven’t had any downtime in our service since it’s been in operation and we’ve found it’s a really simple system to both implement and for staff to use. And it can be accessed anywhere. It’s browser based so you can operate it from home, office or on the bus using your mobile phone.”
Sarah did a great job highlighting some of the key benefits of cloud call centre software:
• Low overheads – you don’t have to buy and install software, you rent it from us as you use it and we host it on your behalf
• Outsourced management and maintenance – it’s our job to make sure your call centre software is fully operational, 24×7
• Fast and easy to implement – there’s no software to install and no need to integrate with your systems, unless you want to – your team can log on and start using CONTACT straight away.
• Access anywhere – if you and your team need to look after customers away from the call centre you can log on from home computers or a smart phone – even if you’re on the bus!
Read more about the success Wokingham Council are having with cloud software in their call centre.
Contact us to find out more about cloud call centre software for your business.
