Jacada for Telecommunications

Overview

The Telecommunications (“Telcos”) landscape is constantly evolving. In an effort to outpace competition in a highly homogenized industry, Telcos continue to release hundreds of new products, and variations of existing products, every year. New data and voice plans, product bundles and value added services are released with alarming frequency, not to mention the rapid pace of technology innovation required to remain competitive. One need only survey the market over the last few years to see how the migration from phone to Smartphone has changed the telco landscape forever.

Telecommunications customers who have relied on Jacada’s Telco process optimization and customer service improvement expertise:

Telcos reveal a wealth of challenges facing them in the immediate future.

These include:

The customer service experience
Evolution of network infrastructure (3G, EV-DO, HSPA+, 4G)
Increase in data bandwidth as result of Smartphone and mobile computing (ie. Tablets) usage
Increased demand for Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH)
Demand for Transparent invoicing
Increase in Customer Support as result of Third party applications ("App stores") support

Consumers, eager to be early adopters of new technology, or wishing to take advantage of the most competitive price plan, will task your call center agents with the ability to support complex plan changes, product inquiries, billing issues and technical support, all the while needing the ability to continue to support older equipment and plans. Moreover, call flows are becoming unpredictable as customers phone with multiple issue types in a single call. As a result, Telcos have no choice but to either increase the number of call center agents or improve system efficiency. The alternative, degrading customer service, is not a positive scenario. After all, it is at this moment – this customer interaction – that customers can be won or lost.

At Jacada, our mission is to optimize your systems and your processes, so that you can rise to meet the needs of the increasingly sophisticated consumer and product landscape, without increasing agent count or degrading the customer service experience. In other words, do more, with less.

Jacada’s solutions are installed in telecommunications companies around the globe in Sales, Customer Service, Customer Support, and Retail stores. With our telecommunications expertise and best practices, we are well suited to help you find a solution to your most difficult customer service experience challenges.

Jacada Telco Implementation Highlights

Reduced Operational Cost of nearly $8 Million
A 30% Reductions in Average Handling Times
A 30% Reduction in Training Time
A 30% Reduction in Call Backs
Call center consolidation approaching 20%”

Jacada Experience: Why Customers Contact Telecommunication Companies

Manage rate plans and add, cancel, or move services
Diagnosis and trouble-shooting (why is my cable out?)
Billing inquiries (why is my bill so high?)

Telecommunications Pains and Jacada’s solutions

Customer Retention (and Up-sell) – Customer retention is easily the number one pain point in the telecommunications industry. With the exception of time limited monopolies on devices, products and services have become a commodity. Minutes on a voice plan, or megabytes on a data plan remain ubiquitous. Differentiation is made on price, quality of service (speed, uptime) and customer service. Price differentiation alone is a slippery slope and generally not a sustainable business model. The Customer service experience therefore, should be a primary area of focus. In fact, Retention is highly attributed to better customer service, more so than price or quality of service. Jacada has proven its ability to improve the Customer Experience by building sophisticated User Interfaces that allow agents to provide a superior customer service experience by modeling process around the customer, not around the systems.

Upsell/Right-Pricing – A natural tension exists between offering the right plan for the customer versus the most profitable plan for the company. This false dichotomy may be bridged by intelligently building models and systems that ensure “right pricing” for the customer while meeting corporate growth goals. Jacada has extensive experience in optimal price plan offerings allowing agents to offer the right plan at the right time.

Billing – Few calls are more complex than those related to billing. While companies have made tremendous strides in pushing billing inquiries to the self-service channel, complex bill inquiries still require agent interaction. Moreover, with multiple product and plan changes, consumer billing has become even more complicated. To further complicate matters, frequent agent errors such as the incorrect establishment of service or pricing on the first bill prove costly (through multiple calls) for the company and create a negative customer service experience. As an example, one Jacada customer reports that prior to implementing the Jacada solution, 70 percent of their new customers called upon receiving their first bill. Jacada solutions help the agent analyze the customer billing status and provide a solution. For example, our billing module allows for the display of multiple bills in a side-by-side comparison, with visual indications of billing anomalies or deviations from the norm. This visual representation allows the agent to quickly identify, diagnose and resolve the issue.

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Products Complexity– New product offerings are becoming increasingly complicated. Bundling is a simple example. In many cases, the individual products and services that comprise the bundle are offered in partnership with a number of companies. Customers, on the other hand, are unaware of multiple vendors comprising a bundle, and want to deal with a single vendor. The adage in the industry is a “single throat to choke”. As a result, Agents need to work with multiple applications from multiple companies, none of which are integrated. Agents need to perform “swivel chair” integration, resulting in significant “cut and paste” between applications and long call times. Jacada enables these organizations to have one agent desktop that brings all these systems into one unified application. In addition, our new Dynamic Views and Agent Scripting products enable Marketing to create offers which can be quickly deployed to the agents. Customers have told us that their competitive advantage is having Jacada in their Sales department!

Tech Support for increasingly complicated products - Industry statistics show that smart-phones have increased the number of agents in the customer support department by 25 percent. With these devices supporting third party applications, agents may need more training due to many of the problems being application specific. In addition, too many escalated calls occur in the technical support process because agents either do not follow the proper resolution steps or they skip steps completely. All of these scenarios cost Telco providers lots of money and result in a poor customer service experience. Jacada has proven that using Jacada Agent Scripting can decrease the number of escalated calls from Level 1 to Level 2 by 50 percent. As Level 1 agents are typically significantly less costly agents to employ, the saving is tremendous. An additional bonus is the improvement of First Call Resolution (FCR) which has a very positive effect on the customer experience.

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Siloed Applications – The problem of Siloed applications is well known. Customer and Agent frustration results as call times increase, redundant data entry occurs and seemingly simple call types become unwieldy and complex. Telcos were the first to install CRM applications in their Call Centers with the belief that CRM would solve this problem, and replace all other applications on the desktop. However, they were also the first to admit that CRM became yet another siloed application on the desktop. Because the systems that run a telecommunications company are disconnected, there is currently no way to quickly share data between the CRM, billing, provisioning, order management, and content management systems. Jacada has solved this issue and, for most of our customers, Jacada’s solutions have become the only user interface on the desktop, while allowing the rest of applications to still exist in the back end.

Customer Experience – Telecommunications providers are focused on retention and growing a quality customer base (i.e., those who will pay their bills). They know that those customers who are purchasing several different services from one provider expect a higher level of service and a positive experience each time they deal with the provider. Telecommunications providers are measuring and promoting their net promoter score and JD Power results as proof of their emphasis on providing a good customer experience. However, there are many catalysts to a poor customer service experience, including hold times, average handle times, first call resolution and perceived treatment. Jacada can utilize its 21 years in the customer service space to apply its expertise and software to your unique problems. With some of the world’s largest Telcos as our customers, we understand the industry and welcome the opportunity to work with you.

Case Studies

To see how Jacada’s software solutions and process optimization expertise have been applied in some of the world’s largest Telecommunications companies, download this Telecommunications Contact Centers Case Study: Jacada Solutions ImproveQuality, Efficiency, and Deliver Cost Savingsto Telecommunications Contact Centers.

Jacada Solutions for the Telecommunications industry

Improve Customer Retention Jacada WorkSpace Agent Desktop
Improve Techical Support Jacada Agent Scripting
Solve Complex Bundling Call Flows Jacada WorkSpace Agent Desktop
Integrate Disparate Legacy Systems Jacada Integration and Automation
Automate Routine Desktop Processes Jacada Integration and Automation