Every telecom call center decision maker (from fixed and mobile telcos to cable operators and ISPs) has the same overriding challenge: provide better and more consistent service and reduce operating costs at the same time. CosmoCall Universe helps with the top three priorities of most telecoms today in their ongoing efforts to meet this challenge:

• Transform multiple standalone operations, including offshore operations, into a single virtual call center for maximum efficiency and control.
• Reduce the application integration backlog that slows down agents and makes them less productive.
• Provide unified, universal customer access via telephone, email, and internet channels, to open less costly or more convenient interaction channels while preserving quality and consistency across all channels.

Virtual Call Centers

Creating a virtual call center is one of the most effective ways to accomplish both of the apparently contradictory objectives of service improvement and cost reduction. With a virtual call center, staffing resources are used to their maximum efficiency, and experts are available to any caller that needs them, via location independent skills-based routing. Also, with a virtual call center, mergers, spin-offs, reorganizations, and redeployments are far less painful and costly as their effects ripple through the enterprise and shake up the call center status quo.

But virtualization itself requires an investment that has to be justified. Since CosmoCom's IP-based architecture is inherently virtual, this process is more cost effective and easier to justify with CosmoCom than with any other technology, especially for telecoms that have created their own high performance IP networks. CosmoCom is the affordable and fast-deploying virtual call center in which multiple agent locations, agents at home, even follow-the-sun agents in distant places, are all managed and utilized as parts of a single system image.

Virtualization and Offshore Outsourcing 
Perhaps the most powerful example of the need for virtual call centers in telecom customer care is the trend to offshore outsourcing of agents. According to a study by Deloitte & Touche, telecom will outsource 275,000 jobs offshore by 2008, and many of these will be call center agents. Creating virtual call centers will help telecoms make this move without compromising the level of customer service. With a virtual call center, customers can reach the most cost effective agent without losing access to onshore specialists when needed, and managers retain complete operational visibility and control of activity across the globe.

Application Integration

One recent study showed that telephone company agents face an average of 7 different legacy applications on their desktops, and for some the number is as high as 15. This situation translates directly into cost factors: agent time for navigation; training time and training cost; agent churn; and the cost of the inevitable errors in customer satisfaction. Everyone knows about this problem, but progress is slow because of the high cost of application integration with legacy call center technologies.

CosmoCall Universe greatly simplifies the integration in two ways:

1. By unifying the product, building in much of the functionality that has to be done as custom integration in the traditional call center environment. With CosmoCall Universe, the critical flow of information from IVR to ACD to Agent Desktop, so complex and difficult to achieve in legacy call centers, almost takes care of itself, because all of these are simply elements of one unified product.
    
2. By replacing many integration points (ACD, IVR, CTI, etc.) for external applications with a single one, CosmoConnector, which has consistently proven to be far more efficient than any other integration framework, often accomplishing in hours integrations that have remained elusive after months of work with traditional methods.

Universal Access

As telecoms provide more and more messaging services and move to more and more web-based customer self service, it becomes increasingly important to transform your call center into a contact center - one that supports every contact channel in a unified way that maximizes agent productivity, minimizes response time for all contact types, and gives agents access to customer interaction history across all channels. CosmoCall Universe provides all of these interaction methods, and it provides them in a completely unified way, since it was designed from the ground up for multi-channel contact. CRM screen pops look the same for all channels, customer interaction history includes them all, and agent productivity reports encompass them all.

If you are a telephone company facing these challenges and looking for a way to improve your customer care, chances are that CosmoCom has a channel partner near you that can bring you CosmoCall Universe to help you meet them head on and triumph. Click here if you'd like to talk with a CosmoCom partner about your needs, or if you'd like to be a CosmoCom partner for this opportunity.

Additional Customer Care Resources for Telecoms

Read a white paper on how to provide better and more consistent service, and reduce operating costs.

View a recording of our Webinar and learn how to improve your telecom customer care.