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Cloud-Based Collaboration is the Key to Driving Efficiency, Alignment, Analytical Abilities & Insight-Based Results I Page 1
Businesses are radically transforming to meet consumer demands and expectations that are emerging from digital forces such as cloud, mobile, social and IoT. With new digital channels and personalized services, we’re experiencing a tipping point where we can deliver customer service in more advanced ways than ever before and improve the customer’s experience. This pace of change is driving customer service organizations to rethink how they measure customer experiences, prepare and manage their teams, and deliver continuous process improvement. And while we certainly can’t work any harder, we can work smarter. Cloud-based collaboration is key to driving efficiency, alignment, analytical abilities and insight-based results — and I’ll show you how.
Cloud-Based CollaborationSYKES embarked on a journey to build our own cloud-based collaboration platform, which we call OneTEAM, that would solve a few different challenges — ones that you probably see in your own companies. We wanted greater flexibility to organize our teams and distribute work, breaking the traditional building boundaries and organizational constraints. We wanted to give our agents more tools at their fingertips to answer more complex questions. We wanted to understand agent interactions with customers better, and we wanted analytics to help provide better customer service and work smarter. The OneTEAM platform is now in 14 of our site locations in more than four countries with 6,000+ agents actively working within it each day, and we have plans for continued expansion through the end of the year.
Driving EfficiencyWith real-time, cloud-based collaboration, you increase flexibility in several ways. The agents and support staff no longer need to be in the same physical location. Now, proximity is taken out of the equation, and your
team members can collaborate in a variety of business models: brick-and-mortar, at-home or a combination of both. Visibility into team activities increases with digital collaboration, enabling the team to prioritize actions and improve teamwork. When you ask a question within this platform, you can crowd-source an answer from someone two cubes away or from someone halfway around the globe. Our enhanced agent experience leads to productivity gains and improved service for the customer. The digitization of agent support allows us to build rich datasets that help us understand why and how often agents require additional support to service our customers. Our analytics then enable us to dive into that information, driving feedback to process, knowledge and training for continuous improvement. Plus, it provides us a platform to work on automating that support.
Gaining AlignmentWhen you have 50,000+ agents answering consumer questions daily, you want to make sure you are all marching to the same beat — answering questions consistently and with the most accurate information. The same is true for all
CLOUD-BASED COLLABORATION IS THE KEY TO DRIVING EFFICIENCY, ALIGNMENT, ANALYTICAL ABILITIES & INSIGHT-BASED RESULTS
By Dave Pearson, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Sykes Enterprises, Incorporated,published this article in the esoutlook.com, November 17, 2017
Cloud-Based Collaboration is the Key to Driving Efficiency, Alignment, Analytical Abilities & Insight-Based Results I Page 2
business sizes. By connecting a team digitally, you create an organizational network similar to a social network. It facilitates information-sharing, fosters connectedness within the team, and provides one-to-one and one-to-many messaging. And like a social network, it can be analyzed for sentiment, topics, trends, participation and influence. This network effect allows you to observe how aligned the team is in delivering consistent, high-quality service interactions. Within the platform, you access the same tools and information that your coworkers use, preventing inaccurate information shares and completely differing responses per person. In our business, we see consumers researching and self-servicing against their own unique challenges before they call into our centers, which means their questions are more complex and technical. OneTEAM gives our agents the right tools and support to answer these questions quickly and accurately to keep our customers happy.
Advanced Analytical AbilitiesThere are two types of datasets: structured and unstructured. Most businesses are familiar with analyzing structured data — Excel numbers turned into charts and graphs, etc. — but unstructured data can be harder to dissect because it measures things like conversations and behaviors. Each call provides a continuous stream of data like agent actions, behaviors and conversations combined with traditional call-center metrics, resulting in a precedent-setting pool of data. But when you apply natural language processing and machine learning to those elements, you can start to analyze what makes up each part of that phone call or customer experience. It’s like turning a 2D picture into a 3D picture, because you can see so much more depth and you gain so much more knowledge. Because our cloud-based collaboration platform logs all this data, it gives us the structure to learn from every customer interaction like never before.
Producing Insight-Based ResultsNow that we have all this data, it’s time to turn it into actionable insights to fuel back into your processes, business knowledge, team-member training and personalized coaching. Within the cloud-based collaboration system, you’ll be able to see where team members are struggling and address it upfront in training and coaching sessions. Maybe you uncovered a need for new resources, tools or process changes so your team members can deliver the very best customer service. Next, you can develop a plan to create those materials and distribute them within the system for easy adoption. Besides adjusting upstream processes to train and prepare the team, real-time predictive analytics with self-learning capabilities provide recommendations for operational leaders to improve performance throughout the day. The whole point is to help ensure your team can work smarter vs. harder — and using insights to develop new efficiencies is the way to do it.
Dave PearsonExecutive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Sykes Enterprises, Incorporated
Mr. Pearson joined SYKES as Vice President of Engineering in 1997, directing research and development of cutting-edge customer service, web-based support and technical support systems. In 2000, he became the Vice President of Technology Systems Management. In this role, he managed Global Information Systems and IT Operations for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Dave was responsible for IT planning and standards, data centers, information systems, security and SYKES Network Operations Centers.