Page 3 - TelecomReseller June-July 2017

June/July 2017
Telecom Reseller 3
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CAre Telecom Customer Surveys Becoming Obsolete?
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ompanies can conduct surveys a er a KENDRICK with a new set of “next-layer” questions which Management could setup categories and tags to speci c encounter with the customer, need to be written and distributed. identify phrasing such as “terrible coverage” or but they only capture a narrow range of “dropped calls” and quickly understand if they
opinions and directional information. ey don’t By Scott Kendrick, VP of THE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION have a spike in related complaints.
provide a gauge of customer satisfaction and Marketing, CallMiner Telecom companies that want to move beyond While speech analytics does require some
sentiments. With surveys, only a small fraction of contacted customers will respond, so telecom rms are not receiving a true picture of the voice of the customer. ey’re a high cost way to gain little data, and “ ltering bias” occurs due to how the questions are worded.
ankfully, technology tools exist that give companies a way to collect and analyze data from every call, so they can pull insights that re ect the entire customer base.
PERSISTENT PROBLEMS
Surveys require manual work, and represent time which could be spent on other areas. Telecom rms could instead focus their call center agents on selling, instead of taking
the time to conduct manual surveys. ere ROI simply isn’t there, despite some rms viewing surveys as an important part of quality assurance (QA). ey’re an ine cient form
JACHNER
disadvantage to their larger competitors, and this has forced some businesses to divert resources and make costly investments in changing platforms altogether in order to continue supporting business needs.
Hybrid cloud solutions help address these business challenges, enabling SMBs to adapt without the CAPEX investment. In a hybrid approach to communications, modularity is key: you can provide basic communications on- premise with the ability to easily adopt additional cloud-based services on a case-by-case basis.
BALANCE COST AND CAPABILITY
For SMBs, some of the reluctance to adopt cloud-based communication services stems
from existing investment in on-premise systems. Hybrid is a rst step into the cloud - and o ers the chance for SMBs to reduce on-premise hardware slowly without a full-scale commitment to cloud-based operations. It enables them to retain on-premise platforms to leverage existing investment, and add cost-e ective cloud-based communication services where needed to support business requirements. ese could be new services such as enterprise-class instant messaging, exible web conferencing and collaboration tools, or video calling.
e hybrid approach also provides an easy
(www.callminer.com)
of QA as they only capture a fraction of the customer populations’ opinions.
Survey responders o en ignore the “middle ground” because people that respond to surveys are typically those that are either very happy or very disappointed with the brand. e “average” customers’ opinion is missing, so the telecom provider might make strategic decisions based on limited data.
Traditional phone surveys require a team
to develop questions, create a script, wait for responses, and then perform analysis to nd any trends or insights. And these surveys typically only scratch the surface of an issue. For example, if a subset of respondents has comments on cell phone coverage, there might need to be a follow-up survey for this group,
Hybrid cloud frees up in-house resources by shifting responsibility for maintenance and support to the cloud provider
migration path in the future. As the existing on- premise equipment reaches the end of its lifespan, SMBs will already be in a position to understand the pros and cons of cloud-based services, enabling them to make the best decisions for their future communications platform. As older on-site communications systems become more challenging to maintain, they can be smoothly phased out in favor of public or private cloud services.
THE PROVIDER SAFETY NET
Hybrid cloud frees up in-house resources by shi ing responsibility for maintenance and support to the cloud provider – especially for more complex services. is avoids tying up the limited capacity of on-site IT departments with
manual surveys should look to technology tools that can transform how customer opinions are monitored and analyzed. Using speech analytics, companies can turn every agent-to-client interaction into searchable text. Such a solution can capture 100% of calls and be programmed to recognize certain phrasing or keywords that that re ect the customer’s opinions/frustrations/ wishes.
By capturing the content of every call, telecom managers can tweak call scripts with questions in order to gauge certain metrics. For example, they could capture information on the clarity
of customer’s phone calls, service coverage,
or their satisfaction with a newly-launched pricing plan through natural conversation rather than asking survey questions. And the beauty of speech analytics is call centers who record calls already have the data they need to gauge customer opinion and various metrics.
continued from page 1
cloud deployment and management.
Whether services rely on the availability of on-
premise systems or the public cloud, even a short period of downtime can severely a ect business. Ensuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to provide continuous management, maintenance and on-demand support to minimize downtime can be a huge bene t for SMBs. By this, we’re talking about remote updating of so ware
and hardware, as well as patching security aws without delay - allowing in-house IT departments to focus on keeping on-premise systems operational.
A key aspect of hybrid is the ability to shi this burden to the provider but retain control in- house for the premise.
IS IT STILL ‘DAVID VS GOLIATH’?
Traditionally only larger enterprises have been able to a ord the luxury of large-scale investment into IT departments and new infrastructure,
but hybrid cloud is levelling the playing eld
for SMBs. Hybrid cloud puts SMBs on a technological par by meeting current business and workforce demands for cloud, while pushing responsibility for management and support
out to a provider. Investment is protected by retaining on-premise infrastructure to meet security and data privacy requirements. ■
initial setup of various parameters, once implemented such tools provide actionable feedback. And they capture all of the data, so the analysis will nd additional context and meaning behind every interaction. Advanced tools can monitor the acoustic characteristics
of a voice and combine that with the context to create a “sentiment” analysis that details the true meaning behind the spoken words.
Perhaps a provider just launched a new phone that unfortunately has multiple operating system-level bugs. Speech analytics of customer service interactions could recognize these problems and the company could use social media and other channels to present a forward- thinking response. is is the main bene t of speech analytics compared to surveys, its ability to provide “context at speed” so businesses can quickly see what they are doing wrong and right when it comes to customer experience. ■
netsapiens Introduces
Advanced Features and Updates to SNAPsolution Unied Communications Software Platform
e new features and updates include an enhanced portal security, PUSH support for SNAPmobile and E911 improvements
SAN DIEGO, CA - netsapiens, a provider
of uni ed communications (UC) services
and feature-sets to service providers and large enterprises, has announced that it has launched new features and made signi cant upgrades
to its SNAPsolution uni ed communications so ware platform. e updates are provided to all existing SNAPsolution users through netsapiens’ maintenance and support program. Designed to enhance the user’s “uni ed experience,” the new upgrades empower users to keep pace with the evolving needs of their customers.
“We never stop improving on our SNAPsolution UC platform,” states Dave George – SVP and General Manager of netsapiens. “ ese new
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