August 7^th, the start date of this year’s APCO International Conference and Trade Show, is approaching fast - we are looking forward to seeing you in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!  We are particularly excited about this event as APCO selected our customer City of Edmond to share the best practices for latest-generation communications recording and quality assurance at a Training Session that has been scheduled for 4pm on Monday, August 8^th. This is a must-see presentation that breaks the barriers of what was once seen as too much to ask from recording and quality assurance technology. As a bonus, we are certain that you will enjoy the dynamic, engaging presentation style of Matt Stillwell, Director of Emergency Communications for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma and senior advisor at APCO.

In the meantime, or if you're unable to make it to the APCO Conference this year, we invite you to watch the video here to learn about:

·      Smart new ways of the City of Edmond's 911 center and other departments to record and share communications.

·      What you really need in recording and multimedia incident recreation technology.

·      How to implement an effective QA program to get better insights in less time and prepare for upcoming new standards.

If you have any questions about this video or would like to schedule a private meeting or demo with us at the conference (our booth number is 1001), please contact Patrick Botz at pbotz@VPI-corp.com. Thanks and hope to see you there!

For the past 15 years, APCO has been carefully crafting a list of operational standards in order to ensure the best possible quality in public safety emergency communications. Now, in collaboration with NENA and associated industry bodies, this lengthy endeavor has culminated in the development of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) standards, along with soon-to-be introduced Quality Assurance (QA) standards. These new requirements are raising the bar for the quality of service required from the nation’s public safety agencies.

Quality of service is impacted by both the performance of employees and the processes in use.  Periodic, systematic quality evaluation of emergency contact center communications can provide invaluable transparency to everyone involved and expose inadequacies in both employee and process areas. This is especially critical in the current transitional period when old, inadequate communication systems are being replaced with Next Generation technologies and 9-1-1 centers are expected to handle various different types of communications - not just voice and TTY communications any more. Plus, the increasingly complex nature of public safety communications entails new regulations that PSAP centers will have to demonstrably comply with. The traditional approach to quality management is being replaced with evaluation of multiple communication streams and types involved in incidents, along with a variety of supporting evidence, such as images, videos, text documents and data. Prioritization of such evaluations is driven by significance of various incident types, so selection of recordings for evaluation has to be subordinated to that. When correctly planned and executed, the latest-generation software-driven quality evaluation can deliver valuable insights into the best course of corrective actions to support the new demands.

In response to the introduction of the new NG9-1-1 and QA standards and the difficulties faced by cash-strapped organizations in attempting to comply with them, VPI is launching its ‘Upgrade to Quality’ program for public safety and security organizations.  The program, valid from now through June 30th, 2011, stretches the tight budgets of public safety and security organizations by enabling them to affordably upgrade their legacy recording systems with VPI’s state-of-the-art VPI CAPTURE™ voice logging system and provides double the value by including free VPI QUALITY™ call taker quality assurance software. VPI CAPTURE is an affordable, NG9-1-1 ready recording system that installs quickly to reliably and securely capture, manage and share critical incident information and to provide insights to optimize workforce efficiency.

For more information, conditions and restrictions on VPI’s ‘Upgrade to Quality’ program, visit http://www.VPI-corp.com/Quality or contact us at 1-800-200-5430. 

Most organizations who sell products and services over the phone are required to record calls – for a good reason, indeed. Customer disputes are all too common and contact center liability is substantial. Specific disclosures must be read as a part of the transaction and the proof of compliance with this process must be available in a form of verbal receipt.

For example, a specific marketing agency will allow listening to recordings if the client asks for it. In one actual example, a client was charged a fee on their credit card for extra protection. The client must have agreed to this in a prior phone call with this company. The client was questioning the charge however, and the customer service representative (CSR) stated she could cancel the protection plan and refund one month. The client wanted all months refunded, not just one. The CSR said she could not do that unless the person did not agree to the extra protection previously. The customer then insisted on a proof-- he wanted to hear the recording where he agreed to the extra protection and associated charge. The CSR said she could request a copy of the recording from the contact center recording system, but she could not provide the refund and resolve the dispute immediately. The recording, once retrieved and forwarded to the client, would provide a verbal record of the transaction. She handled her tone and the client very well, although she was confident that based on how this company operates, the client had agreed to the charge.

In situation like this, organizations most commonly have to access their contact center recording system to retrieve the relevant call record and burn it onto a CD for the customer. Some have the capability to email it to the customer as well. However, sending an actual audio file out and leaving it in the hands of a customer requires series of approvals within a contact center – by a legal department, supervisor, and a QA manager as a minimum. Inevitably, this runs up the cost of call resolution for the contact center and it also stretches the wait time for the customer which impacts customer satisfaction (and provides opportunities for negative word of mouth until the issue is finally resolved.)

Fortunately, latest contact center recording technologies from VPI provide a practical solution in a form of a “perishable PIN number” playback. A recording can be assigned a PIN number that will expire after a period of time determined by the agent who sets up access to the recording, in accordance with the contact center’s policy. Customer can then access his or her original call simply by dialing into the contact center recording system via any phone line and a secure-access PIN that automatically triggers playback of that one recording. All of this can be taken care of within seconds of the customer request. Handled once and done.

Do you view your recorded call and screen interactions as an element of data that helps you inspect your business? Do you have an effective, cost-effective method to unlock information that is critical to inspecting interactions in context of business outcomes? How do you identify and address business issues that go beyond agent behavior - to optimize the business impact of recording and quality evaluation, associated with fostering your customer relationships?

Traditional call center quality assurance methods dictate review of randomly selected calls. We agree that pulling random samples of recordings for inspection is the only practical way to measure key behaviors and processes that are impacting the business.   The real question is - random samples of what recordings?  Not all recordings have the same value and deserve time and resources to be invested into their review.

As you record interactions and collect metadata, VPI helps you visualize, interpret and act on your records in a revolutionary way. Recordings do not need to be flat and unintelligent entities anymore.   You are no longer limited to a simple “beginning and end” visualization on a timeline that represents your voice file length. When you use VPI’s intelligent recording systems with integrated desktop screen analytics for call center quality assurance, you can see - before you even listen to a call - what happened, when it happened, how it ended, and how it relates to your specific business objectives.   Your team can use this information to determine if the call holds enough value to justify inspection, or move on to another transaction that is likely to be more revealing and more actionable. Now you can target your time and resources wisely to maximize the business impact of your call center quality assurance.

The VPI approach that leverages tightly integrated desktop screen analytics is unique. Unlike what any other alternatives permit, it can bring this level of intelligence to the capture and playback process – accurately and cost-effectively. While one of your options is to unpack the call content through expensive and lengthy to implement speech analytics application approach, the VPI method unlocks this valuable information at a much lower cost and in a fraction of the time.   Powered by VPI Fact Finder, you will be able to monitor agent use of applications at the desktop level and “extract” valuable information as it is accessed or entered into systems.   Without back-end integration work, and typically implemented within minutes, you will be able to “listen” to any Windows-based or Web-browser Based application interface, scrape important information about each transaction and associate it with appropriate voice and/or screen recordings.    

To illustrate the power of VPI Fact Finder - if you were in a sound-proof booth, and could only watch the agent access or enter information, do you think you would have a handle on what the call was about?   Sure you would.   VPI Fact Finder is like looking over their shoulder and automatically taking notes of the key information and events that happen within a call and appending your observations to the call record, so you can understand the call context from an at-glance view before you even listen. For example, you could pull Customer ID, Sales Value, Product Codes, Call Disposition, etc, and place these values in the database associated with the call record.   Often the data about the interaction is more important than the call recording itself.   Utilizing this captured data and combining it with dozens of telephony-related metrics, you gain the ability to support your call center quality assurance program and serve your organization's call center optimization efforts in ways that far exceed traditional quality monitoring methods.

Traditional contact center quality monitoring involves random capture of call recordings – either based on predetermined selection criteria or schedules.   We agree that it is impossible for human beings to inspect every single call; but there are two dynamics we have to consider – separating the capture method from the call selection method.  

Latest-generation call recording software allows for recording all calls first, and then a powerful rules engine is used to decide which calls to keep or inspect.   It may sound like a small nuance, but actually this type of call center recording software design approach opens the solution to become far more effective to inspect call center effectiveness.   Rather than make selections of calls for call center quality assurance based on when somebody is scheduled to be in their seat, or assuming that we are taking an X% sample of total call volume when we are not yet aware of how many calls the agent takes, or hoping that we get a sample of calls that are prime examples of effectiveness in handling high value transactions – we suggest a different approach – an approach we term precision quality monitoring.    It involves a call recoridng software designed for the capture of all calls, then determination of what to inspect based on a variety of outcomes. Outcome-based information is used to determine which calls need to be stored, which calls need to be secured in a more robust manner (i.e. for PCI and HIPAA compliance, etc.), which calls answer interesting questions about the performance of a new process, and which calls can simply be discarded.

The outcomes used to make these critical decisions are either attributes of the calls themselves, attributes of the agents fielding the calls, or simply true random samples based on any number of criteria.   When the call recording software is enhanced with desktop screen analytics, not only can the calls be tagged with extended information in a unique way, but they can also be analyzed based on the associated information and provide a roadmap for your management team to identify trends – both positive and negative - that affect performance.    This approach is revolutionary, because it breaks down barriers that have long been separating related functions.   In the old days (a couple of years ago), you would have an approach for running reports and analyzing data that flows through your call center, then you would go to another call center quality assurance system for inspecting agent performance and perhaps hunt for examples of the performance trends.   Unfortunately, using a random method based on limited agent based information meant that it was often difficult to find enough examples of the call types involved in the trend to make a legitimate operational adjustment based on the sample.  

Latest call recording software and integrated performance optimization technologies change that dynamic. The process of identifying and addressing business issues is completely unified. Now you can identify trends in interactions, both positive and negative, and then the recorded interactions become an element of the data you are reviewing.   Importantly, these latest-generation call center optimization technologies are incredibly easy to use and take the selection guesswork out of the equation. They truly automate the end-to-end quality review process, beginning with identifying the appropriate calls to inspect, serving those calls to the right person to perform the inspection in a simple “to do” list, and address the issues uncovered through a variety of action steps. 

To find out more about uncovering performance issues via intelligent recording and quality management, visit: http://www.vpi-corp.com/Call-Center-Quality-Assurance-Management-Software.asp

The saying in business that you can’t manage what you can’t measure is so true that it became cliché’.   When it comes to call center quality assurance at today’s organizations, latest generation technologies breathe new life into this over-used expression.   For more than a decade now, QA teams have been using agent centric approaches, listening to calls at random for the purpose of inspecting call handling skills (x or % of calls per Agent per month).    Agent-centric call monitoring will always have a place in call center quality assurance as an element of a broader quality program, but progressive contact centers should not be satisfied that this method is enough.

The amount of calls and transaction types that flow through the enterprise can be staggering; and let’s face it, not all contacts are of equal concern for inspection.   Sure, it is nice to know that an associate is handling an address change request with respect and professionalism, but the transaction itself is a low value interaction – so inspecting it simply adds cost to a transaction that tells you very little about the business.  

Latest technologies enable a practical and cost effective approach to increasing the business value of call center quality assurance - termed Precision Quality Monitoring.   Instead of relying on a solely agent based approach,  rules for inspection can be more concerned with call outcomes.   Precision Quality Monitoring recognizes that the best answers – those answers that lead to cost reduction and improved outcomes -- are a function of the most interesting questions.   Instead of asking, how is a particular associate doing with ten random calls per month, the questions can change within a Precision Quality Monitoring context to be customer or operations focused.    Instead of looking for random interactions, the questions driving inspection can be more focused: show me calls that resulted in a sale of product type X, that also included product Y, and had a value greater than $150.    In a service situation, the question may be framed this way: “Show me all calls where John Smith called me from Store 123 in the last 10 days,” or “Show me all calls from case #4567,” or “Show me all examples where calls related to issue XYZ has led to multiple calls from the same caller in the last 30 days.”   These types of questions are operations and outcome focused. They get to the heart of issues and help you uncover ways to improve the business – ways that transcend agent behavior, yet fully account for this key performance element.

To learn how to incorporate and leverage intelligent, business centric questions in your call center quality assurance process, visit: http://www.vpi-corp.com/Call-Center-Quality-Assurance-Management-Software.asp