Interview: 'Our aim is to reduce customer calls'

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Bangalore based 24/7 Customer is the first Indian BPO to provide integrated customer lifecycle management (CLM) services that delivers a seamless end customer experience across the entire lifecycle. As the chief innovations officer (CIO), Mohit Jain, heads the new division "Innovation Labs" that continually innovates using artificial intelligence and other technology tools to deliver new products and services in the domain of CLM

The BPO sector is on a redefining path where concentration is more on quality. How would you describe the transition of objectives?
In the last 5 years, the emphasis was more on organizations trying to ensure that the entire system works round the clock in order to extend support for customers across the globe. So the prime objective of IT systems was to keep the nuts and bolts of the processes running well. However, over the last one-year, we have noticed that companies are laying more emphasis on the quality of calls – to understand what each customer call reflects and how to reduce the number of calls. Reduction in number of calls coming in would reflect efficacy of first-call resolution and lesser repeat calls. In some cases the companies' objective is to eliminate calls altogether. Organizations are looking at having a right mix of channels (web, e-mail, chat or voice) so as to lower the cost per contact. This represents a shift in the outlook of the companies in what they expect from IT.

In what way are IT systems being modified to address these objectives?
As BPOs are witnessing the phase two of the service management, the role of technology is changing to empower businesses. The critical objective is to understand various dimensions of the nature of the problem, when did the customer last contact and through which channel, what were the past responses and what best response to be given presently. So application of data analysis across multiple channels is a critical requirement; the ability to mine the humongous data and to provide business insight is second imperative; finally, to use this insight to enhance customer's experience becomes third imperative.

How have you implemented technology at 24/7 Customer to align with your business goals?
Our business goals are tightly aligned with the end-consumer, which means we will do whatever it takes to enhance customer's experience. Our focus is on customer's entire lifecycle management. A chief objective is how to reduce number of calls and ensure best customer experience.

We have slowly and steadily created a data warehouse that holds interactive data across various channels. Data mining accurately captures the customer's footprint across all channels-voice, chat, web or e-mail. We have used both conventional statistical tools and very advanced AI tools to create business insights. To give some example, when a call arrives, there are several dimensions of the call – the customer dimension, agent dimension, product and type dimension. We have solutions to understand what combination of these dimensions can lead to maximum number of repeat calls. So our data warehousing and business intelligence tools alert the agent to pay attention to this analysis. Therefore, the agent is well equipped to address the customer's call effectively while saving time.

How are you able to ensure consistency of service to a customer across all channels?
This is the single largest problem. When a customer connects to us through more than one channel, then the challenge is for the agent to understand the nature of past interaction. If we cannot establish dialogue connectivity we can lose a customer. For this we have deployed three tools – identity management system that identifies the customer across multiple channels; dialogue services that maintain the context of conversation and; powerful knowledge management system that prompts every agent as to what he should talk with the customer. This makes it easy for the agent who is responding to the customer's query to identify the customer as well as the dialogue service prompts the agent what dialogue point has been reached from past interactions.

Recently, data theft in India has become a focal point? As a CIO what steps do you feel are necessary to safeguard against this?
I think it's a needless controversy that is over hyped by the media. The reason is that if you were to compare data theft in India so far with the data theft occurrences in a single US based company has faced in a single year, you will notice that the frequency of data theft in the US is very common and we are not even aware of it as its never 'caught' by the media. But having said that, Indian BPOs are very serious about data theft. Technology already exists to prevent and eliminate data theft. Also, there are enough policy guidelines in place. However, the challenge for a CIO is to how to knit all these tools to ensure well-oiled system to prevent a data theft and carry out proper investigation. At 24/7 Customer, we have deployed enough security measures but as CIO I have to continually ensure the loopholes in the system are reviewed regularly and to see that there is enough maturity of the processes.

The competition between rivals means that margins are getting smaller, and firms need to take a hard look at ways to keep their costs under control. Under these circumstances how are you coping with technology requirements?
One of the core objectives is to keep exploring new technologies to see how these suit our customers. We have never hesitated to spend on new technologies. We began our operations in 2000, and from day one we have been on IP infrastructure. The decision to go completely on IP infrastructure ensures our control over cost. When the cost of bandwidth came down in India, we shifted our telecom operations center from the US to India, saving us a lot of money. This switch has effectively reduced capital expenditure between 30% and 35% while our operating expenditure is reduced by 20-25%.

Also, our advice to others is that there is no choice but to gear up for the future of convergence. We are extremely excited about WiMax as it will allow us to offer jobs to physically challenged employees to work from home. Besides, we can also attract a large workforce who can work from home and need not be at office for 8 hours like housewives, students, etc. One of the key reasons is that we can deploy and attract large population of workforce who can work from home.

Malovika Rao
malovikar@cybermedia.co.in