VPI has fully integrated its award-winning VPI PERFORMANCE real-time call center reporting and performance management software with Cisco’s UCC Express and UCC Enterprise platforms. VPI PERFORMANCE contact center reporting software complements and enhances Cisco UCC Express and UCC Enterprise platforms greatly by consolidating data and presenting actionable, real-time information in the form of Web dashboards, interactive reports, scorecards and desktop tickers to empower managers, supervisors and agents to make better, quicker decisions.

We invite you to watch the new "VPI PERFORMANCE Cisco Reporting Software for UCC Contact Centers' video - you'll learn how to get even more value from your Cisco UCC investment!

Join VPI and Straumann for an exciting webinar showcasing the powerful reporting solutions for Cisco UCC Contact Centers. You'll learn how Cisco and VPI helped Straumann develop and award-winning real-time contact center performance reporting solution.

Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM ET, 10:00 AM PT
Register here.

Now you can get even more value from your Cisco UCC Express (UCCX) or UCC Enterprise (UCCE) investment. VPI, a Cisco Solution Developer, VIP and SIP Partner, has integrated its award-winning VPI Performance contact center reporting and performance management software application with Cisco. This functionality complements and enhances the UCCX and UCCE platforms greatly by consolidating data and presenting actionable, real-time information in the form of Web dashboards, interactive reports, scorecards and desktop tickers to empower contact center managers, supervisors and agents to make better, quicker decisions.

Learn how Cisco and VPI customer Straumann, a global leader in dental implant solutions and restorative dentistry, enhanced the capabilities of its Cisco Unified Contact Center system and operations with VPI’s award-winning real-time Cisco reporting software solution.

Register to attend the complimentary Webinar, hosted by subject matter experts from Straumann and VPI, to learn how you can:

• Create and report on metrics based on Cisco UCCX, UCCE and other contact center data (CRM, ERP, QA, WFM) to meet business objectives.
• Report across multiple teams and queues, locations and Cisco UCCX/UCCE systems to get a holistic view of contact center operations.
• Perform true historical reporting with unlimited data collection – get insights into trending over time and a historically accurate representation of your agents’ group assignments.
• Create flexible grouping structures to report on groups and teams in any manner that makes most sense to your business.
• Drill through layers of data for root cause analysis and trigger targeted alerts, notifications and Coaching assignments based on performance thresholds to promptly correct performance gaps.

Scheduling Conflict? Register for the Webinar and we'll send you the recorded version.

Presenters:

Carlo Wise - IT Specialist, Straumann

Carlo Wise serves as a senior IT Specialist at Straumann, a global leader in dental implant solutions and restorative dentistry, leveraging his strong background in all facets of telephony and network systems integration. He is an experienced IT and Contact Center professional with over 16 years of experience in supporting and implementing Contact Center technologies in small to large Contact Center environments. Mr. Wise holds a variety of industry certifications, including Cisco, CompTIA and Redhat.

Delee Shields - Channel Sales Director, VPI
 
Delee has been instrumental in working closely with Cisco in developing VPI's Cisco Developer Network (CDN) Solution Developer, Value Incentive (VIP) and Solutions Incentive (SIP) partnership programs. She is responsible for working hand-in-hand with Cisco customers and channel partners through the entire sales process. She has extensive knowledge of Cisco Unified Communications product platforms and is highly experienced in Cisco reporting software, Cisco call recording software, workforce optimization, VoIP, LAN, WAN, MAN and wireless solution design. Prior to joining VPI as a sales engineer in 2007, she worked in sales and sales engineering capacities promoting Cisco solutions as well as earning her Cisco CCNA and CCNP certifications.

Ahead of this year's holiday season, consumers charged more to their credit cards for second straight month. Robust holiday spending is driving the speculation that U.S. consumers are shifting their use of credit and debit toward credit. Early spending patterns do suggest that total credit card spending is increasing, as it has all year. Worldwide, consumers carry more than 1 billion Visa cards alone. More than 450 million of those cards are in the United States. The number of U.S. identity fraud victims rose 12 percent to 11.1 million adults last year. Credit and debit card fraud is the No. 1 fear of Americans in the midst of the global financial crisis. Concern about fraud supersedes that of terrorism, computer and health viruses and personal safety – one in ten Americans have already been victims of credit card fraud. Software.net found that as many as 40% of its transactions were fraudulent. Expedia.com lost $6 million due to fraudulent credit card purchases.

During the holidays and throughout the year, contact centers that engage in catalog sales, up-selling and/or cross-selling, service providers, and collection companies that take payments in the form of credit or debit cards can become unsuspecting targets of cyber criminals. The card information is typically entered by agents into a CRM or other sales automation software and may be recorded by voice and screen recorders. And there it resides - thousands and even millions of card records inviting remote criminals or even greedy employees to extract consumer card data for personal gain or sell into a sophisticated secondary market.

The payment card industry (PCI) established a Council to define technical standards aimed at minimizing the risk of cyber crime to the misuse of credit cards. The Council subsequently issued a Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which details security requirements for members, merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit cardholder data. Contact centers and other organizations that accept credit card payments are generally prohibited from archiving sensitive information such as account numbers and security codes after payment authorization has been received. Compliance to PCI-DSS is now mandatory for all non-credit card 'issuing' organizations dealing with credit, debit and ATM cards, as defined by the PCI Security Standards Council - size of an organization and its annual sales are no longer a factor for exceptions. While being compliant to PCI DSS - an already daunting task - is the first part, it it also required that you prove your organization's compliance to PCI-DSS. This PCI Audit is performed either with a set of questionnaires or by a Qualified Security Assessor, external to the organization.

On October 28, 2010, the Payment Card Industry Standards Council made a major update to the PCI Data Security Standard to clarify it. PCI DSS version 2.0 went effective on January 1, 2011. In PCI DSS version 2.0, the PCI DSS standards were clarified to require that no sensitive credit card information be stored within recorded calls, even if those calls are encrypted. The standards committee made the change because of the availability of sophisticated malware that could penetrate encryption algorithms. Organizations that do not take action by December 31, 2011 to ensure compliance with these new PCI call recording requirements could face costly fines. 

Achieving PCI DSS Compliance

To help organizations ensure compliance and avoid costly fines, VPI has developed an effective, affordable solution. The VPI CAPTURE PCI call recording system has the ability to detect when an agent enters an application screen with sensitive information, when sensitive information is inputted, and when they leave a screen containing sensitive information.  The VPI telephone voice recording system then has the ability to promptly mute sections of recorded audio and mask screen video during this sensitive portion of the call.


To further secure sensitive information, the VPI CAPTURE PCI DSS call recording system help you:

• Secure File and Data Transport and Storage Encryption – VPI uses built-in end-to-end data encryption and key management to secure the SQL database that holds attributes of all recordings. The media manager provides for AES 128, 192, 256 or variable bit encryption/decryption when files are stored and accessed from the media manager.
•  Ensure Authenticity with File Watermarking - Every call within the VPI system is wartermarked in real time to ensure authenticity. VPI offers a powerful application to validate the authenticity of any WAV file.
• Monitor User Activity with Detailed Audit Log Reporting – VPI records all user activity within the system so that organizations can conduct full trace audits to determine who accessed any recording in the system and when - for playback, export, or any other critical events.

I recently attended the Avaya Evolutions Conference in Toronto at the Metro Convention Center and had the opportunity to discuss the latest technology trends and best practices of Avaya partners and hearing success stories directly from satisfied customers.

It was insightful to hear from leaders on the direction of the industry as it embraces another exciting year ahead in Canada. I learnt how organizations in today’s turbulent economy have used these practical tips for improving their overall effectiveness through VPI products on the Avaya platform.

VPI has been a dedicated Avaya DevConnect Gold Partner since 2002 and has fully integrated its award-winning VPI Performance real-time reporting and performance management software with Avaya Communication Manager.

VPI Performance consolidates and presents real-time information to empower contact center managers, supervisors and agents in several integrated ways to help them make better, quicker decisions with actionable, targeted performance and business intelligence. Included in this robust suite are 18 Avaya CMS reports, over 40 Avaya CMS metrics for use in customizable scorecards and desktop tickers, and a messaging and alerting capability.

This functionality supplements the Avaya Communication Manager platform greatly and has been a valuable asset to many Avaya customers in achieving their objectives. Regardless of the industry—an effective deployment requires the right partner like VPI who has insight on the right improvement methodologies and talented resources available with the highest impact and most cost-effective resourcing opportunities.

VPI Performance consolidates and presents real-time information to empower contact center managers, supervisors and agents in several integrated ways to help them make better, quicker decisions with actionable, targeted performance and business intelligence. Included are 18 Avaya CMS reports, over 40 Avaya CMS metrics for use in customizable scorecards and desktop tickers, and a messaging and alerting capability.

In a turbulent and volatile economy, organizations still must strive to improve their business environments using these tools and strategies to develop their skilled workforce while automating routine tasks and processes.

This is where I believe VPI can greatly enhance an organization find ways to enhance their overall operational effectiveness with our wide range of products and professional services.

Here are some important capabilities that I believe, that VPI Performance offers beyond standard Avaya CMS reporting capabilities:

1. Gather Performance Information from Additional Contact Center Systems – VPI Performance can bring in meaningful data and metrics from other sources – including other business systems (CRM, ERP, WFM, etc.) and other VPI modules (Quality, Coaching) and in a timely and relevant manner for each user – to Avaya CMS to get a fully consolidated view of the contact center which is critical in today’s environments.
   
2. Easily Report Across Multiple Teams Across Multiple Queues, Multiple Locations and Even Multiple Avaya CMS Systems – Managers get a single, holistic and enterprise-wide view of their contact center operations across several work groups and channels. 
   
3. Create Custom Metrics based on Avaya CMS and Other Contact Center Data to Meet Business Objectives, then report on those metrics displayed in a variety of formats including real-time Web dashboard charts, scorecards and desktop tickers. No need to rely on raw Avaya CMS data alone.
   
4. Presents Information Instantly in Real-time – no need to rely on IT or reporting analysts to pull together information, by downloading it, adding to Excel, and preparing for management.
   
5. Off-loads the Burden on the Avaya CMS Server – all reporting is performed within VPI Performance. This saves time and money when creating reports for senior leaders.
   
6. Create Flexible Grouping Structures to Report on Groups and Teams in any Manner that Makes Most Sense to the Business – managers are not used to seeing reports by a single queue only. For example, most contact centers will have a team of agents that handle calls from multiple queues. VPI reports give managers a true view into an individual agent’s performance thereby the true measure of their individual performance.
   
7. Create a Flexible, Hierarchical Grouping of Split/Skills – Allows users to reorganize and consolidate data across multiple splits. Multiple hierarchies can be created to provide different views of split data. This is helpful when split/skills are created by IT and don't directly map to business measurements.
   
8. Reports Present a Historically Accurate Representation of an Agent's Group Assignment – team data is retained as agents are moved to different teams, something that is often asked by managers especially when skilled agents are moved around to help call loads.
   
9. No Limitation on the Amount of Contact Center Data Collected or How Long it is Stored – managers can do true historical reporting on consolidated contact center metrics (such as sales conversions, CSAT, emails, Web chats, etc. in addition to CMS call metrics), giving them insight into trending over time, or simply giving them the option to pull reports on older data. With VPI Performance, interval-based data is retained indefinitely.
   
10.   All Group and Agent Data can be Controlled and Dispersed Based on User Profiles and Permissions – this type of reporting flexibility allows contact centers to mitigate and contain risks and unwanted breached caused by agents. 
    
11.   Ability to Deliver Targeted Alerts, Notifications and Optional E-Coaching Assignments based on Performance Thresholds to promptly correct performance gaps while at the same time keeping a watchful eye out for situations that are creating issues for agents.

I found that VPI’s Call Center Reporting and Call Center Coaching Software are perceived as a cultural transformation within the contact centers by their leaders who are deeply appreciative of VPI. We have trained their Supervisory staff and Managers in powerful work habits that are easy to describe on a large scale and on a regular basis. For example, coaching, performance management, feedback sessions, formal rewards, and people development are now part of our customers’ culture where one did not exist. Such developments have strongly motivated our team of developers, our managers and most importantly the front-line agents, which is our ultimate goal.

Lately it’s been tough to find much positive news about business and the economy. However, the latest report from the National Association of Call Centers (NACC) shows a very positive outlook for the contact center industry. The benchmarking report shows that the contact center industry has rebounded from the recession and has been steadily growing over the past couple of years. In fact, 95% of the respondents felt that economic and business conditions in 2011 will be the same or even better than they were in 2010. Download the North American Contact Center Industry 2011 Mid-Year Update and Forecast research report now to learn more about how our industry has weathered the tough times and come out smarter, stronger and prepared for the future.

In this report you’ll learn what the NACC sees as some of the contributing factors to the industry's resilience, including:

• Advances in Workforce Optimization technology, including quality monitoring, performance management, E-learning and workforce management.
• Growing interest in Social Media
• High interest in Desktop Analytics solutions
• How First Call Resolution is being tracked
• Key Unified Communications trends
• Contact Center Hiring patterns and trends

Recently, VPI teamed up with Ovum Research, a premier analyst firm in the technology and telecom sectors, on a new white paper titled “Getting Workforce Optimization Right: How to Align Your Agent Training and Management with the Needs of Your Customers.” It was a great opportunity for us to learn firsthand what Ovum Analyst, Aphrodite Brinsmead, sees as the “must haves” for best-in-class contact centers to use as Workforce Optimization Technologies (or WOTs as she calls them). She specifically focuses on the many advantages of levering an integrated workforce optimization suite, like VPI EMPOWER suite.

As I’m sure you’re painfully aware, contact centers are under immense pressure to improve customer satisfaction while at the same time, reducing costs. It seems that the mantra for businesses these days is “Do More With (much) Less.” This is challenging in any enterprise, but the contact center is unique in that its performance metrics and satisfaction scores are usually separated. It’s tough to know where to cut back or where to add staff when you can’t pinpoint the problems! Ovum believes that enterprises need to connect those traditionally siloed customer satisfaction metrics with agent performance, and tailor training accordingly. Makes perfect sense, right? But, in many cases, easier said than done!

This is where WOTs clearly provide a clear competitive advantage. This white paper shows you how to harness the power of these unified solutions in your own contact center. I really liked the graphic Ovum created to illustrate how the tools work together and the role each plays in the overall success of the contact center:

1. Quality Monitoring + Analytics: Desktop or speech analytics can be integrated with quality monitoring/call recording to automatically select important calls or call from a particular category to be monitored.
2. Quality Monitoring + Performance Management: This enable managers to combine quantitative and qualitative information for a complete assessment of contact center productivity and its contribution to the bottom line.

In an already competitive and crowded marketplace, organizations today are continuously seeking ways to lower operating costs and increase revenues. The landscape has changed dramatically in the past decade. Organizations  are closely scrutinized by regulators and consumers who have high expectations from outsourced partners and 3^rd party vendors. In the wake of  the global financial crisis that has negatively impacted some of the world’s leading economies, organizations are starting to revisit their strategy, in terms of outsourcing contact center contracts, and demanding more than just cost savings. This mindset is now creating concerns among outsourcers and 3^rd party vendors, who can no longer attract and maintain their customer base just on the basis of their ability to provide a cost savings advantage.

The role of the contact center has undergone a dramatic shift from that of a cost center to that of a profit and value center. In light of this new pressure to provide greater value, outsourcers are now responding to their clients’ raised expectations by implementing increasingly complex solutions.   Despite the proliferation of e-commerce and digital technology, one fundamental principle remains consistent: Outsourcers are key strategic partners for organizations to deliver value by focusing their operations on attracting, fulfilling and retaining high value and loyal customers. As a result, the fragile relationship in which the outsourced operation manages its entire resources is critical to the client and their customer base. Outsourcers are beginning to recognize the positive correlation between customer experience, employee engagement and increased revenues, even in a stagnant condition within the economy.

Today's unpredictable, volatile and increasingly competitive economic climate continues to add to the pressure to decrease costs and increase revenues while simultaneously delivering higher than normal levels of customer service. Following are five ways for outsourcers to reduce contact center operational costs while at the same time “delighting” clients with superior levels of service. Think of each recommendation as an idea worthy of consideration and capable of standing on its own merit, yet part of an overall strategy addressing the optimal performance of the contact center.

1) Make agent attrition rates a KPI – The management of retention in an outsourced contact center has the most significant impact on payroll costs and profitability. While HR may be generally involved with the recruitment, selection and hiring of staff, the key driver in agent satisfaction lies in the knowledge and capability of their line managers. High performing outsourced operations invest in the training and development of their team leaders and supervisors to ensure that they have the necessary tools and resources to support agents. As a result, high performing outsourced contact centers build scorecards and other intervention tools to ensure that the overall strategic goals of the contact center are met.

2) Ensure that you're measuring the metrics that really matter – It is crucial to select meaningful and effective metrics necessary to enhance performance that lead to customer satisfaction. It is important to maintain the discipline of reviewing these metrics using a rigorous methodology that is adopted across all levels of the contact center and links desired behaviors necessary to meet organizational objectives. A sample list of metrics for outsourced operations should be reviewed as business needs change and fluctuate. Typically high performing providers link their operational objectives to their clients and review these over Business Review Meetings and Quarterly Reviews for alignment.

3) Eliminate guess work by implementing real-time reports, tickers and scorecards – Outsourced operations that implement rigorous, regular performance scorecards and analysis consistently outperform mediocre centers due to their speed and reaction time advantage. Weekly or daily historical reporting in a dynamic, ever-changing environment is neither effective nor efficient for the purpose of determining the tactics needed to address a particular situation where calls spike unexpectedly. If managers receive real-time reports on the performance of their operations by agent group or skill, they are able to rapidly make strategic decisions without impacting service levels. Often, these tactics are overlooked and end up costing contact centers more money than they had forecasted. Avoid red flags and those repeated frantic calls from clients by being proactive to daily operational issues with real-time information and data.

4) Tighten the span of control between Managers and Agents – Numerous surveys and a great deal of research point to the fact that, due to costs, outsourced operations are guilty of having an unusually high number of agents relative to the line managers. One of the reasons that agents quit is the level of contact or the lack of coaching or leadership they receive from their line manager.. Typically for optimal performance the span of control should be between 1:10 or 1:15 to generate the desired results within a contact center.

5) Automate e-Learning, coaching and virtual classroom training – The emergence of the internet and the proliferation of innovative electronic learning and coaching courses have enabled high performance outsourced centers to bring training to the agent desktop during low call volume moments.  Team leaders and supervisors can also use quiet time to enroll in critical mandatory modules for compliance and product or process knowledge. This can create enormous opportunities for contact center training teams to focus and deliver other mission-critical courses and modules that require classroom training during those scarce resource hours. The combination of these methods will drive down costs while at the same time increase proficiency of agents while building a training team that is highly effective.

When implemented properly, each of these ideas offers the potential to deliver anywhere from a small benefit in a short period of time to much larger benefits over a period of a year. While any one idea may provide some short-term savings, the effort to optimize the performance of the contact center is best undertaken within the context of a continuous improvement program with regular reviews of all the components of the solution prescribed for the contact center.

Are you interested in keeping up-to-date on the latest developments in contact center call recording, quality monitoring, analytics, performance management or eLearning technologies?

As organizations look to optimize the performance of their contact centers and the vital role agents play in providing customers with the right experiences as they handle interactions, the demand for thorough research into vendors and products that support agent performance management is becoming critical. Ventana Research has just released this ground-breaking independent research report on Contact Center Agent Performance Management solutions.

You can download your complimentary 2010 Value Index for Agent Performance Management Research Report by Ventana Research at http://www.VPI-corp.com/2010-Value-Index to learn:

• What tools can help you more effectively manage of all the business activities associated with handling customer interactions to ensure an optimal customer experience and alignment to a common set of customer and revenue goals and objectives.
• A framework for buyers to thoroughly review technology vendors as they seek to purchase new systems to support their efforts.
• How 13 agent performance management software vendors and their products were ranked in several categories.
• Why VPI achieved the highest 'Hot Vendor' rating and was rated #1 in Customer Assurance.

Measuring performance is fundamental to contact center operations of all sizes. The call center quality assurance (QA) measurement process is often one of the main performance data collection vehicles for management. However, few contact centers have implemented a program or have adequate resources in place for meaningfully tracking and improving performance, let alone providing feedback from customers to the rest of the organization to enable strategic-level business improvements. Many contact center managers operate with a haphazard collection of uncoordinated and often irrelevant performance statistics that require too much time and error-prone manual work to interpret, which often leads to misguided decisions. In these conditions of ad-hoc “analysis”, wasteful utilization of resources can go undetected for long periods of time and business objectives may not be achieved, as managers take ineffective actions to correct deficiencies which are aimed to attack symptoms instead of root causes. The problem is deepened by the fact that most quality and performance measurement tools are rigid or inflexible to change. Some efforts focus on compliance-driven performance tracking and call center reporting - in accordance with internally developed standards and procedures that are outdated, outmoded, or even assuming that the contact center is already providing the right products and services to its customers. What’s more, many contact centers have not discussed the business strategy with their front line agents or supervisors. Consequently, there is often a great need to go back and revisit their goals and objectives and to adjust the functions of their department in order to ensure that the right products and services are being provided by the agent.

To start recovering from this situation, managers must first recognize that measuring of performance in a coordinated, systematic, standardized way that provides true insights and direction for achieving business objectives is a basic need of an organization - and a fundamental responsibility of management. It is the key to any organization’s survival.

To achieve high-value business insights as they track performance, contact center managers should focus data collection, interpretation and analysis on a set of measures that answer the following questions:

·         Are we providing the correct services to our clients, using the most skilled agents?

·         Are we able to resolve customer issues and overcome objections in a timely manner?

·         Are our agents providing a positive and memorable experience to our customers?

·         Do our agents and their immediate supervisors really understand what is expected from them?

Using VPI Empower, you can consolidate all data that is periodically collected from disparate source systems in your contact center. Once you have all data in one place, apply real-time performance tracking tools, intuitive graphical call center reporting dashboards, and business rules-driven alert system to monitor key performance indicators. Now you can measure progress towards meeting business objectives for the contact center, gaining insights that can be acted upon in an effective and timely manner – for optimization of service delivery. Call center quality assurance goals can then be subordinated to the overall strategy, so that they support the mission and objectives of the organization. The specific call center quality assurance goals defined in this process should be strategic, tactical, and operational, depending on the level of service channel that is being supported. They may include the definition of quality, timeliness, resource utilization, or customer satisfaction from the customer’s point of view.  

Call center quality assurance processes should be guided and supported by performance measures as they define specific standards that allow the calibration of performance and overall quality, which, when made actionable and acted upon, ultimately leads to more business from happier customers. Performance measures should be selected carefully and funded proportionately to their value, in order to support corporate goals and strategy, contact center objectives, and critical success factors for an effective call center quality assurance program. Review them regularly to evaluate how well the delivery system is performing and whether the correct products and services are provided. The value of adequate recruitment, selection, training and education of line managers to execute these objectives should not be underestimated. Success ultimately rests on their coaching effectiveness and their ability to cultivate skill while inspiring their staff to higher levels of performance.
 

In today’s challenging economic climate, analytics is changing the way companies do business and dramatically improving contact  center operations, managers want quick and  accurate insights into the effectiveness of their contact center operations in order to make prudent, timely decisions, but they don't have the time or resources to listen to and review  the vast amount of customer interactions  handled by the agents every day. 

In addition to this there is no shortage of performance metrics available from their PBX and ACD. These days there seems to be more sophisticated tools including multimedia recording, desktop analytics, instant chat, self service options in the IVR, cloud computing,  etc. Managers and supervisors today are able to choose from a myriad of options to manage performance but where do they start to do their quality evaluations in a systematic manner using complex algorithmic mathematical formulas combined with scientific methodologies and their own intuition? Therein lies their dilemma. So little time, so much to accomplish in the course of a day...

Quality monitoring systems offered today are not only to evaluate agents but also to evaluate a contact center reputation. Yes, reputation, might sound obvious but too often contact centers seem to miss this critical view point. A customer's perception of service captured in a call recording or video file says a lot about the culture of the organization. Call Center Reporting and Call Monitoring Systems are a means to an end in that one has to learn from the information and who else to translate these to actions and outcomes than the Supervisor. This has to be one of the most critical and unforgiving roles within the contact center next to the agent. Sort of being a start quarterback being called in to throw a touchdown on each attempt when the offensive team is on and the line backer when the defensive line is on.

The role of the supervisor and their agent has been so devalued over the years that it is not a surprise the attrition rates for these roles are in double digits. This is not a malaise or a disease or caused by the recent global financial crisis or globalization. We did this to ourselves. We have become part of a culture that communicates via a keyboard than by voice skills and the traditional skills that our parents taught us about being polite and respectful. We complicate the connection with our customers and prospects through voice prompts and boring scripts to keep the agents from really having a connection with the customers.

Enter VPI and it's Empower suite of products. In my humble opinion, this product is a god-send for managers, supervisors and front-line agents. VPI has truly defined the new expectation of a customer through a fresh set of lenses. It shatters the level of "mediocrity" to "excellence" in quality and performance from the customer's point of view. The power of the data can now be turned into knowledge which in turn can be turned into wisdom for coaching to excellence and that translates to actionable analytics and outcomes.

Quality Assurance is everyone's responsibility and by giving power to the people who  influence agent behaviors, then the Supervisor should be the quarterback that determines the outcome of the game. Like they said in the movie, if you build, the customers will come. VPI has started this movement by building on a framework that is supervisor-friendly for QA success. If we synthesize all these goals, the aim of QA and Call Monitoring becomes a matter of linking outcomes of calls to a customer's behavior not only the agent's behavior. As a result, contact centers can also learn what effects, if any their approach to training and coaching agents have on customers and ultimately the outcomes.

Being proactive and giving agents a larger stake in the pie by identifying areas of strength, best practices and also key training to be used for modeling success. In this way, a contact center can leverage the VPI Empower suite of products and establish guidelines and standards for handling calls instead of dictating what agents should or should not do. In the larger picture, the role of the supervisor and the agent has to be supported through all levels of the organization. As a result, success and a best practice model will show up sooner than later!
 

VPI invites you to download this insightful Frost & Sullivan authored white paper to learn how advanced call center performance management and contact center analytics solutions and integrated call center coaching and training tools can identify and address employee skill gaps and deliver the right information at the right time - enhancing performance and driving greater effectiveness in meeting customer needs.

Download your copy of the complimentary white paper authored by premier research analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, to learn how to:

• Make Better Decisions with Real-Time Information

• Provide Real Time Metrics to Motivate and Empower Employees to Improve

• Achieve Consolidated Reporting from Multiple Systems and Locations

• Drill Down Through Dashboards and Reports to Identify the Root Cause of Problems

• Ensure Alignment of Operational Objectives with Corporate Goals

• Benefit from attractive ROI and Quantifiable Call Center Optimization Benefits

Want to Learn More about the Call Center Recording Software, Quality Assurance Call Monitoring and Call Center Workforce Optimization Software Market, Key Trends and Products?

VPI is pleased to be able to offer you this exclusive opportunity to get your copy of the executive summary of DMG Consulting's comprehensive annual Call Center Quality Assurance/Telephone Call Recording Product and Market Report. Offering 35 pages packed with valuable information, this guide is essential to navigating in the complex market of contact center workforce optimization software technologies.

Use the promo code LINKEDIN to download your complimentary report summary authored by renowned industry analyst and research firm DMG Consulting, to learn:

• Which call center optimization technologies help call center managers achieve contact center optimization 

• Key technology trends that are altering the direction of contact centers

• How to take your call logging software program to the next level and increase productivity while enhancing the customer experience and agent satisfaction

• The direction workforce optimization software technologies are heading and how to best leverage them, including Telephone Voice Recording, Call Center Quality Assurance, Call Center Performance Management, eLearning, Call Center Coaching, Surveying, Contact Center Analytics and Workforce Management (WFM)

• Comparison of workforce optimization software suites vs. stand-alone solutions

• How industry regulations are impacting voice call recording 

• The new strategic role of contact center managers

• Return on investment (ROI) analysis and workforce optimization software 

• What to expect in the future and more!

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

Call center reporting software has, for some time, been evolving from the very basic, disparate technologies of the 90s to the tightly integrated, multi-dimensional software suites of today. Once upon a time, the standard call center performance management system implemented in organizations worldwide consisted of a telephone system, a call logger, an ACD and a CRM solution. Times have changed with the emergence of powerful new performance contact center analytics solutions designed to rapidly boost contact center performance and operational effectiveness – enabling organizations to discover, diagnose and manage issues before they have a chance to adversely impact customer satisfaction.

In order to survive, compete, and truly maximize the productivity and profitability of an organization, managers need much more information than the call center performance management systems of the past could provide. There’s only so much that anyone can do with dozens of disparate reports and spreadsheets of data relating to nothing in particular. Even though customer-agent interactions and the associated telephony data represent a veritable goldmine of business intelligence, the old call center performance management software systems had no way to enable users to access, analyze, and act upon the intelligence. VPI developed VPI PERFORMANCE to empower contact center agents, managers, and executives with actionable, targeted information to drive real-time, multi-level performance improvements through innovative call center reporting and contact center analytics tools. The VPI PERFORMANCE call center performance management software collects and consolidates real-time and historical performance information from multiple telephony and business systems, delivering critical key performance indicators (KPIs) in a timely and relevant manner for each user. With a powerful combination of real-time consolidated call center reporting, root cause performance contact center analytics, and targeted call center coaching and messaging, VPI PERFORMANCE enables contact centers to drive continuous, proactive improvement – crucial for cost containment, contact center optimization profitability.

VPI PERFORMANCE Web-based reports allow managers to conveniently access, analyze and drill through data to quickly identify the root cause of problems or successes - even down to the recorded interaction from the integrated VPI contact center recording system - and immediately change business direction based on actual customer responses and employee performance. As soon as the problem or success is determined, VPI PERFORMANCE call center performance management software ensures the delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time with employee desktop dashboards, tickers and scorecards. Managers and supervisors are equipped to manage the here and now – to take immediate actions to solve immediate problems, rather than trying to handle yesterday’s problems next month, or worse, never managing them at all. Managing based on old information is likely to result in once happy, high-value customers taking their business elsewhere.

Unlike the old call center reporting solutions, VPI PERFORMANCE enables managers to expedite performance improvements through automated, targeted intervention. They can easily automate the feedback and call center coaching process and empower front-line employees and supervisors to be highly effective. The solution helps to maximize time and cost efficiency – electronic call center coaching and learning fits smoothly within existing workflow, is a powerful supplement to face-to-face training, increases retention rates for new information and expedites ramp-up. With timely access to actionable information, managers can rapidly improve sales conversion, collections and quality of service while realizing significant savings in areas such as: agent attrition, quality scores, first call resolution, average talk time, idle time, sickness and absence, average hold time, and much more. With VPI PERFORMANCE, the entire organization will quickly begin to benefit from increased productivity, customer loyalty, and revenue.

Call logging software comes in all shapes and sizes. Selecting the best call recording equipment for your organization’s specific needs can be tricky. Do you need to record for compliance and liability purposes? Or, are you more focused on your quality management goals? What kind of telephone voice recording does your organization currently utilize – traditional voice logging, digital call recording, VoIP call recording, or a combination? Is your organization growing or downsizing? Do you record multiple locations, and if so, is it easy to administer the communications recording system in order to access and analyze any and all recordings, by site, by group, and even down to individual calls? How many technologies do you currently have in place? Would the new call monitoring system have to integrate with any of them? There are indeed many questions to answer and issues to address in the quest for a new quality assurance call monitoring system. VPI has been listening to these questions from its customers for over 15 years, and has designed flexible solutions that can adapt to, and work within, virtually any environment – meeting the needs and expectations of organizations of all types and sizes.

For organizations seeking compliance and liability voice logging, such as public safety agencies, security companies, government bodies, and financial institutions, VPI developed VPI CAPTURE PRO. As the industry’s most secure and feature-rich audio and data phone recording software, VPI CAPTURE PRO enables organizations to seamlessly capture, assess, assemble, and share their recorded communications from a combination of telephone, radio, email and Web chat systems – traditional digital call recording and IP call recording software. In addition to handling compliance and risk management, VPI CAPTURE PRO enables federal, state, local, and private organizations to improve the quality of their mission-critical voice and data interactions and deliver first-rate customer service by acknowledging and utilizing call center quality assurance.

If you’re looking for a call logging software solution that will help you achieve your call center quality assurance goals, VPI CAPTURE PRO is by far your best bet. Whether or not you use a formalized quality evaluation process, VPI CAPTURE PRO allows you to engage in quality assurance call monitoring which will improve the customer service quality delivered by your local or locate and playback high value call recordings directly from a variety of standard reports, and leverage best practice remote employees, focusing on the most pressing business issues. You can monitor live calls across multiple locations, conveniently calls for training – call recordings are highly portable in standard formats and small file sizes.

With the VPI CAPTURE PRO voice call recording solution you can rest assured that whatever your needs may be, and whatever kind of technology and telephone voice recording you may have – both now and in the future – all of your immediate needs will be met, and you will be fully equipped to rise to every challenge that lies ahead. VPI’s open standards call recording equipment and technology welcomes change and meets the associated challenges with many options for fast and cost-effective reconfigurations in order to satisfy changes in legislation, increased capacity, new geographic distribution of your employee teams, or changes between centralized and distributed operation.
 

Voice logging systems were once very basic solutions built to record all or a sample of calls along with some rudimentary telephony data. Generally deployed for compliance and liability purposes, digital call recording systems were viewed as a backroom necessity that occasionally served a purpose whenever a customer dispute occurred. Over the past decade, the role of the call recorder has changed a great deal. The value of recorded interactions and their importance for effective quality assurance call monitoring has become a major focal point in the development of the highly advanced call logger systems available today.

Today’s flexible, elegant communications recording solutions are light years away from the clunky, hardware-based beasts of the past. Gone are the proprietary parts and expensive customizations – today’s advanced digital and VoIP recording software solutions are software based, leveraging open architecture for easy integrations and cost-effective customization. VPI’s robust digital and IP recording software solutions can be customized, scaled and adapted to meet the evolving demands of organizations of all kinds – from small- and medium-sized contact centers to global enterprises employing any combination of in-house and remote employees. VPI CAPTURE PRO is the most progressive, ground-breaking voice call recording and screen data call recording software available today. Highly reliable, easily implemented and remarkably effective in virtually any environment, VPI CAPTURE PRO can record multimedia interactions from a wide range of network configurations, TDM and VoIP telephony environments, and across any number of locations. Powered by VPI Fact Finder™, VPI's powerful desktop screen contact center analytics engine, the call logger tags important employee screen events and facts to call recordings for automated call classification and analysis centered on key business issues.

In recent years, it has become generally recognized that recordings of customer interactions contain a vast amount of intelligence about an organization’s processes, customer satisfaction, front-line employee performance, revenue opportunities, and chances for improvement of strategic position in the marketplace. Recorded interactions between agents and customers are a veritable gold mine of business intelligence, yielding insights into agent performance, product or service perception, and customer satisfaction. Intelligence garnered from customer interactions can be used to improve managerial decisions and investments made by strategic-level departments such as sales, marketing, human resources, research and development, finance, or operations.

VPI EMPOWER offers a rich, business-centric set of tools that make a significant impact on an organization’s bottom line – mitigating risk, enhancing call center quality assurance, streamlining call center reporting, improving call center coaching, and optimizing call center performance management. VPI EMPOWER combines and enhances the benefits of VPI CAPTURE PRO, VPI QUALITY PRO and VPI PERFORMANCE. Individually, each software solution is robust and powerful, but they are exponentially more valuable when integrated.

VPI, the premier global provider of contact center recording and analytics, quality assurance call monitoring and workforce optimization software solutions for enterprises, trading floors, government agencies, and emergency service providers, announced today that VPI EMPOWER has received a 2009 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC®) Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, the leading publication covering CRM, call centers and teleservices since 1982.

"I am pleased to honor VPI for its hard work and success. VPI has displayed true innovation and excellence in the development of its VPI EMPOWER suite of analytics-enhanced contact center recording, call center quality assurance and workforce optimization solutions, and is dedicated to improving the contact center experience as well as the ROI for companies that use them," said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC.

VPI EMPOWER is a powerful, modular suite of Web-based contact center recording software and contact center optimization solutions, comprised of applications for multimedia communications recording and contact center analytics, quality evaluation, electronic learning and call center coaching, and real-time call center performance management. VPI EMPOWER marks a radical departure from the conventional solutions currently available to contact centers. Built upon the foundation of VPI’s long-established, proven technologies, VPI EMPOWER leverages VPI Fact Finder™, a ground-breaking desktop screen analytics technology that automatically detects events and data directly from application screens being used by employees and tags them to appropriate points within recorded interactions. This enables automated classification and more meaningful, targeted quality assurance call monitoring focused on key business issues, such as customer churn, first contact resolution, missed up-sell opportunities, product issues, long hold and handle times, multiple transfers or escalations, and much more. VPI EMPOWER contact center workforce optimization software delivers a significant advantage in just weeks, with an easy-to-use product that requires minimal training.

"We are deeply gratified that VPI EMPOWER has been honored as Product of the Year for Exceptional Innovation by TMC’s Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine," said Patrick Botz, vice president of solutions marketing at VPI. "This prestigious award is a testament to VPI’s commitment to providing innovative, world-class digital and VoIP call recording, call center quality assurance, call center reporting and call center coaching solutions that enable organizations to rapidly and affordably maximize the potential and profitability of their customer contact center operations.