Doing More With Less in the Contact Center

A Case Study with Conney Safety & Inova Solutions

The Challenge

The economic downturn in 2008-2009 made it necessary for contact centers to do more with less. Conney Safety, the nation's largest specialty distributor of safety supplies, was no exception.

In January 2009, Conney determined that it needed to reduce its number of contact center agent staff hours without sacrificing excellence in customer service. Conney's center had always met its service level and abandon rate goals, and needed to find a way to maintain these levels despite the staff reduction.

In addition, Conney realized that managers were spending too much time directing and redirecting agent efforts. If a manager noticed a spike in calls, for example, he or she needed to physically walk from their desk to instruct agents to switch queues or otherwise handle the overflow. This became a time-consuming practice, and Conney's contact center managers knew their time would be better spent elsewhere.

One of Conney's strengths was their quality agents that were cross-trained in multiple disciplines – tech support, key accounts and sales/service. Conney merely lacked the tools and processes that would help them make optimal use of the resources they had.

The Solution

Conney Safety knew that making real-time contact center data available to their agents would be a step in the right direction. So they reached out to Inova Solutions, an industry leader in contact center reporting, for help.

Inova recommended its Desktop Presenter® solution – an application that captures data from an automatic call distributor (ACD) or other data source, and displays key metrics directly on agents' computer desktops. Two Desktop Presenter applications would work in tandem to keep agents informed. First, Inova DataLink would display a color-coded grid of selected real-time and historical metrics on agents' computer desktops. Second, Inova Marquee®, a pop-up messaging application, would appear on the agents' screens when the center is out of adherence with key performance indicators. This would allow agents to self-direct, freeing up valuable management time.

Conney decided to implement both DataLink and Marquee on all 30 of their agents' computers, along with Inova LightLink®, the middleware that integrates with Avaya CMS to capture the real-time and historical data.

The Results

Now that Conney has automated the process of relaying dynamic instructions to agents based on threshold conditions, managers have more time to spend on strategic initiatives.

"We're thrilled with the reporting tools from Inova," said Conney Safety Contact Center Manager Melissa Vondrasek. "The pop-up messaging component lets us automate communication that was previously done manually. Now when the Sales queue is overloaded, our overflow staff can be automatically notified and log-in to help handle the volume."

Conney continues to exceed its service level and abandon rate goals, while handling queue spikes and providing excellence in customer service.