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Computer Aided Service

New technologies are making online customer service more viable.

Berkeley, Calif., like so many other local governments, has embraced electronic government and is determined to use it to improve services for citizens and to enhance city operations. Part of the online makeover includes a new customer relationship management system from JPH International. The new system will enable the city to answer questions, respond to complaints and requests for service in a way that resembles todays consumer-oriented retail world, instead of the plodding bureaucratic system of the public sector.

But the CRM system still relies on one piece of old technology to work. If you want to lodge a complaint, you have to pick up the phone and call the city, where customer service representatives answer the call over public switched telephone networks. In essence, the form of communications between city and constituent hasnt changed at all. And yet, the nations communications channels are undergoing a major transformation. Customers and businesses are embracing new forms of communicating over the Internet, and that includes voice calls, Web chatting and even interactive video as a way to stay in touch.

Todays CRM technology, including solutions from JPH, takes advantage of these multimedia channels, but so far, state and local governments have not. The lack of interest is due partly to governments go-slow attitude toward new technology and partly because the benefits from adopting new channels of communication arent entirely clear.

But this attitude is starting to change. The government market is beginning to shift toward deployment of contact centers within government, according to Graeme Somerville, vice president of marketing for JPH. "In the RFPs weve looked at, weve seen a quick move in the past six to nine months toward capable contact center environments, which includes multi-channel communications," he said. For example, Berkeley plans to add Web-based communications to its CRM application in the next 12 months. And the use of voice over IP (VoIP) in government is beginning to occur, although not necessarily for customer contact centers.

The reason for the sudden surge in interest can be answered with one word: convergence. The technology that can blend voice, chat and video, as well as e-mail, wireless communication and electronic whiteboarding, into one network has matured to the point where organizations can seriously consider investing in the solution for better customer service and see a return on the investment in a reasonable period of time.

"Most government agencies have a pure telephony infrastructure when it comes to constituent contact," said Frank Pasko, director of integrated services for Sideware Corp. "But they know the importance of offering other channels. Thats why they are looking at platforms that support collaborative chat and voice over IP."

To satisfy that growing interest, Sideware has partnered with JPH and Tele-Works, Inc., a telephony firm, to provide state and local governments with a best-of-breed solution for multi-channel contact and CRM. "We see this as an interesting opportunity to blend together three technologies to provide the public sector with a well-rounded solution," Pasko added.

Appealing and Intriguing
The technologies that JPH, Sideware and Tele-Works are using have been available for a while, but its only in the past year or so that they have matured to the point where they can deliver benefits cost-effectively. The most appealing and intriguing is VoIP.

Its been five years since forecasters predicted wed be making most of our calls over the Internet by now. The adoption of VoIP didnt occur quite that fast, but Internet telephony has hung around and is now becoming a big player in the world of communications. One reason vendors kept pushing VoIP has been the expectation of delivering low-cost long distance phone service. But the problem with VoIP has been its poor quality, the lack of bandwidth and the need for so-called soft-switches or IP-based multi-service networks capable of handling data and voice packets seamlessly.

A number of these issues have been addressed and today VoIP is beginning to catch on, especially for CRM applications, according to Sudhakar Kondisetty, senior director for product strategy and planning at Aspect Communications Corp., a company that builds multi-channel contact centers. He agrees there are a lot of cost-saving benefits to using VoIP. "But it also improves business processes," added Kondisetty. "Its much more seamless and effective to collect customer information with VoIP and interact with applications running on the same network than to have two separate networks, one for voice and one for data."

But a major reason most organizations invest in VoIP is the reduction in long-distance charges. Consumers love toll-free numbers but they represent a major expense to the organizations that offer them. VoIP virtually eliminates that cost, while reducing other infrastructure and associated expenses.

Another technology that has become an integral part of CRM recently is collaborative chat. For customers who contact an organization through its Website, live collaborative chat provides an immediate form of two-way communication between the customer service representative (CSR) and the customer. The CSR can converse with the person by sending text messages back and forth, or synchronize browsers and push Web pages to the customer to display new government services.

Sidewares collaborative chat application for government includes a two-way whiteboarding feature that permits the CSR to display for the customer maps or designs that may be part of a business permit application. The government CSR can add marks to these graphics in real time to communicate ideas or problems that may have cropped up during inspection. When this type of real-time collaboration is linked with relevant databases, the government agency or CSR handling the issue can view the customers past contacts with the agency, including past problems, a history of their licenses and permits, all of which can help them provide better service and avoid asking redundant questions or missed opportunities to resolve a problem.

One of the more intriguing communications possibilities is video over IP. Pasko believes that video can play a huge role in the public sector for exchanging information, whether it involves some type of distance learning effort at the public school level or as a training tool for employees. He and others also see applications for video over IP in the public safety and security arena, as well as for videoconferencing.

Video also has potential as another communications channel between constituents and contact centers. For anyone who has watched video streaming over the Internet, with its jerky movements and unsynchronized sound and image, the idea of using it for customer service may seem a bit far-fetched. But video as a communications medium has improved thanks to better compression standards and increases in available bandwidth.

Full-motion video can be compressed from 150 Mbps to between 1.5 Mbps and 6 Mbps, using the MPEG-2 (Motion Pictures Expert Group) standard. With cable modems, DSL (digital subscriber lines) and VPNs (virtual private networks), the amount of bandwidth capable of handling full-motion video has greatly increased in the past few years, making video applications possible. According to Kondisetty, the new IP switching networks that allow VoIP are also capable of handling video.

In fact, Sprint recently unveiled an IP-based videoconferencing solution, which will deliver video traffic over its own networks. "But I just havent seen any customers ask for it here in the United States," he pointed out. Instead, interest has been strongest among foreign companies, in particular airlines and financial institutions.

Multi-Channel Challenges
Video isnt the only Internet communications channel to suffer from a slow adoption rate. The same can be said for VoIP, Web chatting, whiteboarding and wireless applications, as well. "Customers are still trying out these applications," explained Kondisetty. "Theres a lot of infrastructure that has to be overhauled to carry out voice over IP, Web chatting and so on. Organizations also need to consider bandwidth and security issues as well."

Government faces other challenges when it comes to deploying a multi-channel contact center. Kondisetty and others point to the substantial training issues CSRs face as they attempt to talk with one customer and then switch to Web chatting with another. Instead of having CSRs who are well-versed in just verbal communications, an organization will have to cross-train agents in terms of textual communications too. According to Frank Pasko, it takes as long as nine months to train a person to be an effective contact center agent, yet most people only stay on the job for an average of 15 months. "Right now, thats an ineffective way to manage and retain employees," he said.

Then theres the need for a software program that can effectively blend or consolidate the different forms of communications traffic so that the CSR has a complete view of customers across a number of mediums. At the same time, governments must be prepared to deal with that ugly word, "reengineering" should they consider deploying a multimedia contact center with CRM technology. An organization doesnt just implement a contact center, but changes the way they share information and interact with customers, according to Kondisetty.

Finally, multi-channel contact centers that use CRM and handle VoIP, Web chatting, e-mail and other forms of communication are expensive. Right now, only large organizations, such as airlines and financial institutions have the resources to build them. But when done successfully in the private sector, Kondisetty has seen a return on investment within six months to eight months. How that kind of ROI would translate into benefits for the public sector remains to be seen. But it appears that the first government adopters of the technology are beginning to step forward.
With more than 20 years of experience covering state and local government, Tod previously was the editor of Public CIO, e.Republic’s award-winning publication for information technology executives in the public sector. He is now a senior editor for Government Technology and a columnist at Governing magazine.