THE REAL-TIME ENGAGEMENT CENTER

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1 THE NEXT GENERATION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: THE REAL-TIME ENGAGEMENT CENTER HOW TO TRANSFORM SERVICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

2 In the world of customer service, seconds can mean the difference between a customer who s going to leave and a customer who s going to upgrade. Respond to their needs quickly and they ll be happier, more likely to stay loyal and more likely to tell other people. Now you can improve your reactions. That s to say, you can work faster, smarter and safer. And, as a result, your customers will react more favorably. Welcome to the real-time engagement center. INTRODUCTION The availability of digital media provides customers an immediate connection to the companies they do business with, and a service experience that s right here, right now. Now customers demand service, information and resolution in the moment. But they still want the human touch, and a knowledgeable person to solve their more complex issues and needs. That s why 88 percent of customers choose to interact with their providers through an agent. And the more urgent or complicated the issue, the more important it is to have an engaged and authentic agent who cares. 1 These findings reveal the immense opportunity customer service organizations now have to differentiate themselves based on the quality and immediacy of service they provide. Your agents must react faster and smarter in the moment to improve satisfaction, loyalty and retention. And in doing so, your organization will reap other benefits, such as greater share of wallet, improved compliance and fraud prevention. That s what the real-time engagement center is all about. Now customers also want consistency at every touchpoint, and they expect the immediacy of digital media to carry through the entire service experience. They also want to expend as little effort as possible during service interactions. In fact, a staggering 96 percent of customers reward low effort with greater loyalty. 1 And nearly 80 percent of consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good customer service. 2 Service companies would be wise to heed these demands for effortless service. #1 NICE Customer Experience Survey, 2013 #2 Demand For Effortless Service Must Influence Your Customer Strategy, Forrester Research, Inc., June 10, 2014.

3 REAL-TIME ENGAGEMENT CENTER What does it take to transform your contact center into a realtime engagement center? For starters, your modus operandi must shift from offline to real time. Obviously, real time becomes increasingly mission-critical, as more and more processes rely on the ability to complete tasks within the call rather than after the fact. Putting real-time data to work requires the availability and accessibility of data from multiple channels, redundancy and powerful analytics. Let s look at each in detail. ESSENTIALS

4 POWER YOUR CUSTOMER FACING PROCESSES WITH 100% REAL-TIME AVAILABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY AVAILABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY The real-time engagement center thrives on multichannel interaction data, which must be available and accessible at all times, powering value-add applications (more on these below) that can be used across the customer service organization. Thus, you must be able to stream interaction data in real time, as interactions occur and with minimal latency, which boosts relevance. Streaming data enables faster service, context-based decisions and safer interactions that protect both the customer and your organization. Systems must be scalable to support the real-time simultaneous streaming of both the large volume of interactions and the applications using this data. Scalability is directly related to the number of interaction channels that are supported per server. If a server can support high-scale recording and 100 percent streaming simultaneously, the organization can enjoy the benefits of real-time data accessibility and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

5 FAIL-SAFE YOUR ORGANIZATION BUSINESS CONTINUITY To ensure flawless real-time data capture and management, you must fail-safe your organization against outages. Using capturing units with the fewest possible system components ensures minimal dependence on network connectivity between components. Redundancy options such as N+1 chains, 1+1 duplicated recording architecture, and multi-data center disaster recovery mechanism, prevent the loss of data when servers fail or other outages occur. And swift failover mechanisms ensure you can recover quickly when systems do fail, and that outages have minimal impact on your ability to record interactions and engage with customers in real time.

6 IDENTIFY AND LEVERAGE POWERFUL INSIGHTS SMART INTERACTION ANALYTICS Hidden within the vast volumes of interaction data you collect is a wealth of highimpact insights. The entire service organization should have within their grasp valuable information including customer likes and dislikes, needs, wants and expectations. These insights can enable you to provide the most personally relevant service and fine-tuned customer experience with every engagement. Interaction analytics is the key to accessing them. Interaction analytics sifts through the masses of data to identify key customer insights, and makes them available to applications such as real-time decisioning, agent guidance and more. This is the technology that lends the most tailored, insightful and value-adding edge to interactions in the real-time engagement center. SMART INTERACTION ANALYTICS

7 VALUE-ADD REAL-TIME APPLICATIONS Now that you can stream interaction data in real time, analyze it and make it accessible to real-time applications, how does the real-time engagement center use it? There are a variety of ways this free flow of data powers smart actions as interactions unfold, and enables the automation of processes that let the agent focus on delivering the best possible service. Here are a few examples. 1 REAL-TIME SPEECH ANALYTICS Real-time speech analytics takes traditional speech analytics to the next level. It analyzes customer interactions while they happen, detecting verbal cues in conversations and generating actionable insights that, working in conjunction with agent guidance technology (see next item), can positively impact customer reactions and interactions outcomes. For example: Customers at high risk to churn can be identified (by verbal, emotional, and/or tonal triggers) and retained before the call is finished. High importance calls (those where thresholds for emotion, tone, specific verbal cues and even silence are exceeded) can trigger real-time alerts to supervisors, helping them to focus on the calls that most need their attention and enabling them to intervene on the fly. Combined with mobility, the supervisor can receive alerts, at any place or time, and manage the situation accordingly. Subtle sales opportunities can be identified and handled. In short, real-time speech analytics helps your agents hear and act upon what the customer says and doesn t say.

8 VALUE-ADD REAL-TIME APPLICATIONS Now that you can stream interaction data in real time, analyze it and make it accessible to real-time applications, how does the real-time engagement center use it? There are a variety of ways this free flow of data powers smart actions as interactions unfold, and enables the automation of processes that let the agent focus on delivering the best possible service. Here are a few examples. 2 REAL-TIME AGENT GUIDANCE Real-time guidance empowers the agent to take the next-best-action, perfect the customer experience and seize sales opportunities in real time. This technology relies on real-time, context-sensitive, data and decisioning to cue agents with callouts of up-to-date account information, next-best-action recommendations, as well as the most suitable script to follow, all in the context of the current interaction. It hand-holds employees through complex interactions and processes, and helps them reach full case resolution in minimal handle time. Customers will be amazed at how in-tune and intuitive your reps will be. 3 REAL-TIME AUTOMATION Automating simple, routine desktop tasks facilitates and accelerates process handling, and eliminates manual errors. Most importantly, automating processes lets the agent focus on the customer, rather than on tedious details. Some examples include: Auto-fill for data entry. Automated application screen navigation. Launching applications and documents when needed in the context of interactions.

9 VALUE-ADD REAL-TIME APPLICATIONS Now that you can stream interaction data in real time, analyze it and make it accessible to real-time applications, how does the real-time engagement center use it? There are a variety of ways this free flow of data powers smart actions as interactions unfold, and enables the automation of processes that let the agent focus on delivering the best possible service. Here are a few examples REAL-TIME AUTHENTICATION Although verifying their claimed identity is mandatory, customers who contact call centers are often put off by legacy verification processes (such as security questions, PINs and passwords) that can add as much as 90 seconds to their call time. The combination of voice biometrics and seamless customer enrollment with realtime decisioning and agent guidance solves the authentication challenge. Realtime authentication securely verifies customer identity quickly and easily, all in the background of the call in progress. Remember, customers want the companies they do business with to value their time, so you ll get high marks for making authentication transparent to them. Plus, you ll reduce handle time, improve fraud prevention and lower your operational costs. REAL-TIME FRAUD PREVENTION Fraud prevention is an ongoing, evolving challenge for financial institutions. To prevent fraud losses, avoid regulatory actions and protect your brand, you ll need an enterprise-wide fraud prevention solution built on a common, proven platform. But most importantly, it must identify fraud in real time during the call. With real-time capabilities, you ll avoid any fraud-related damage whatsoever, and save the need for tedious investigations after the fact. REAL-TIME COMPLIANCE Real-time compliance ensures contact center agents adherence to company policies and regulatory requirements in the moment, during customer interactions. Here, realtime guidance callouts ensure that agents properly disclose terms and conditions, and capture consent. This automated process makes it easier for the agent to navigate through overlapping regulations and follow the right policy thoroughly. By analyzing agent desktop activity, steep deviations can be identified and processes can be improved. The contact center is among the most vulnerable parts of your compliance chain, so it s important to have a real-time tool to ensure these mandatory items get covered while the customer is on the line.

10 UNLEASHING THE VALUE OF THE REAL-TIME ENGAGEMENT CENTER With the capabilities and applications outlined above, you re on your way to transforming your contact center into a real-time engagement center. Now that you re empowered to understand interactions as they happen and geared to act in real time to generate value and further customer engagement, what other benefits might you expect? CHANGE THE CONVERSATION IN SECONDS SPEND A FEW SECONDS OF QUALITY TIME CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE The customer experience you provide will be timely and tailored to the customer, who won t help but notice the difference. Based on invaluable real-time insights and the actions and guidance they generate, your agents will respond in an optimal manner as customer interactions occur. These responses are no longer limited just to answering questions or providing information, but can now extend beyond the reason for the customer s call to serve needs he didn t know he had. EFFICIENCY AND ENGAGEMENT Automating manual processes will minimize cycle times, reduce human error and generally make processes more efficient. Automation also spares agents from non-value-adding procedures, focusing their time and concentrating their attention on delivering the engaged, human service experience customers love.

11 UNLEASHING THE VALUE OF THE REAL-TIME ENGAGEMENT CENTER With the capabilities and applications outlined above, you re on your way to transforming your contact center into a real-time engagement center. Now that you re empowered to understand interactions as they happen and geared to act in real-time to generate value and further customer engagement, what other benefits might you expect? ARGH TO AHHHH IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE UPSET TO UPSELL IN AN INSTANT THIS IS TRUTH IN THE MOMENT CHURN REDUCTION By providing a great response to a negative experience, unhappy customers can become your biggest fans. Prevent customer defections by detecting churn signals and cueing agents to retention actions. You ll not only have kept customers on board, but are likely to have developed new advocates for your brand. SALES OPTIMIZATION Analytics and real-time agent guidance come together here, too, to enable sales optimization. Whether through inbound service calls or other customer interactions, your agents can seize upsell and cross-sell opportunities, grow customer lifetime value, and advance your brand and business by optimizing sales in any interaction. COMPLIANCE AND RISK Your ability to mitigate risk will be enhanced with the ability to ensure compliance in real time. You can now enforce policies and regulations while the customer is on the line, as opposed to carrying out resource-consuming post-call investigations. Similarly, with your new ability to identify and stop fraud in real time, you ll prevent the damage to your brand before it s done.

12 CONCLUSION With the coming of age of real-time technologies, you can and should transform your contact center into a real-time engagement center. Here, smart technology enables agents to interact as human beings vs. formfilling automatons, free to focus on the customer and the issue at hand. And, when you automate and expedite service and provide agents with immediate insights and guidance, you can deliver a more personalized customer experience that differentiates your company, not only from competitors but from any other business your customers interact with. The difference is palpable and powerful. The real-time engagement center is real these aren t futuristic capabilities you can only dream about. The technology is available today via the NICE Engage Platform, which easily covers the basics of data availability and accessibility, resilience and analytics; encompasses a broad range of real-time capabilities and delivers great benefits in customer experience, engagement and efficiency, churn reduction, sales, compliance and more. It s a faster, smarter and safer way to engage with your customers every day. ABOUT NICE SYSTEMS NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the worldwide leading provider of software solutions that enable organizations to take the next best action in order to improve customer experience and business results, ensure compliance, fight financial crime, and safeguard people and assets. NICE s solutions empower organizations to capture, analyze, and apply, in real time, insights from both structured and unstructured Big Data. This data comes from multiple sources, including phone calls, mobile apps, s, chat, social media, video, and transactions. NICE solutions are used by over 25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. CONTACTS Global International HQ, Israel, T F Americas, North America, T F EMEA, Europe & Middle East, T F Asia Pacific, Singapore Office T F The full list of NICE marks are the trademarks or registered trademarks of Nice Systems Ltd. For the full list of NICE trademarks, visit All other marks used are the property of their respective proprietors. DATE 7/2014 CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT ARE COPYRIGHT 2014.