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Before You Make Your Cruise, You Need to Make Your Flight

By TMCnet Special Guest
Asenath Horton

For years, you’ve dreamed of a two-week cruise to the perfect location. You’ve pinched pennies for more than a decade; it’s the ultimate dream voyage.

You arrive at the airport in plenty of time to go through security. You hand your boarding pass and drivers license to the TSA employee. She quickly glances at the documents. “Sorry,” she says. "The name on your boarding pass doesn't match the name on your license. You're not getting on any flight today.”

You beg. You plead. But the TSA employee doesn't budge.

You wonder, “How did this happen?”

Amber is the phone representative with whom you made reservations. She didn't spell your name correctly.

Amber is a single mother. It was 4:53 PM on a Friday, and her two children were stranded at school, having missed the bus two hours earlier.

Now she faces severe penalties, even in losing her job. It’s a reality Amber and other call center agents face when they fall short of expectations.

Companies are hit hard, too. Time and resources are wasted with staff handling unpredictable calls. The process of recruiting, hiring and training new agents never ends. Frustrated staff and customers are inevitable, resulting in non-compliance and clientele loss. Money is lost.

That is one reason Utah-based KomBea has developed soundboard technology.

“Human beings are not perfect and you can only improve them to a certain level,” said Art Coombs, President and CEO of KomBea, “If you really think about that, there are segments of the call we want 100 percent accurate. If a human is not 100 percent accurate, there is disconnect. There are going to be callers out there who get misinformation. That can lead to frustrated customers. It can lead to government penalties and fines. It can lead to class-action lawsuits. It can lead to all sorts of problems.”

Soundboard technology combines live agent interaction with automation. It is designed to let an agent select an appropriate response to a question from a list of recorded responses. Each of these responses contains the exact language needed for compliance with FCC (News - Alert) regulations and company policies.

Some call center agents don’t follow guidelines with complete accuracy. Fatigue, laziness, poor memory, bad training and using outdated scripts can cause many calls to be out of compliance with FCC regulations. In a call center with hundreds of agents, it is virtually impossible to listen to every call to ensure compliance.

Soundboard technology builds quality control into every call. It can guarantee a call center is 100 percent compliant without needing to monitor hundreds or thousands of conversations.

One of the most innovative aspects of soundboard technology is that any response can be changed by the call center and rolled out to all agents in minutes. Time spent instructing and monitoring agents when changes take place is a thing of the past.

What does this mean for call centers? Retaining agents will be easier. A typical call center can suffer an attrition rate that fluctuates between 50 and 100 percent per year. If a call center with 500 employees has a 100 percent annual attrition rate, that means the call center must hire and train 500 new employees each year.

“This tool will reduce attrition because the agent's job is easier and not as stressful,” Coombs said. “Even if there is attrition, it's so much easier to train an agent using protocol than it is to train an agent doing it with their live voice. The training time is reduced.”

H&R Block offers a perfect example of how incorporating soundboard technology into a call center can be a game changer.

One of the world's largest tax firms, H&R Block has a call center in Kansas City, Missouri that has a regular staff of 400 to 500 people. Each December 31, H&R Block will hire an additional 3,000 to 4,000 people to assist with the influx of seasonal calls to their center.

Many of these new agents are located offshore. Training these employees to handle consumer calls can be a nearly impossible task because of the complexities of U.S. tax law. Soundboarding lets H&R Block pre-record answers to virtually any tax question, which an agent can then play to a customer.

This makes it easy for H&R Block to keep the answers and language used consistent no matter who the agent on the other end of the phone may be. The same principle, Coombs said, can work for any call center that has employee turnover, but lacks time and money to do continuous training for new agents.

“Even if an agent does leave, which we know they will, the negative impact of training a new agent is exponentially easier with this tool,” Coombs said. “A new agent can come up to speed very quickly and be seasoned and accurate much faster. The negative impact of attrition is lessened.”

Agents like soundboard technology because it creates more accuracy and consistency in their call delivery. No longer burdened by a ton of scripted information they are required to share, an agent can focus on listening to a caller. This lets them relay answers to questions and solve problems more easily. Customers can go from beginning to end of a call without hearing a live agent because they get the information they need through automated responses.

Call centers no longer have to worry about an agent being rude or inattentive. They don't have to deal with callers running into agents who can't find a solution to their problem or is not fully prepared to answer their question.

"If your call center is struggling with compliance in any way, this tool radically improves – if not eliminates – real true compliance problems,” Coombs said.

About the Author: A business owner and writer, Asenath enjoys exploring the intersection of business and technology. She is passionate about how businesses leverage and scale using high touch innovation and disruptive technology. She currently serves as President Elect for NAWBO SLC and owns Salt City Roofers. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and has won several community awards. Her mission is to completely inspire the people in her life. Her hobbies include racecar driving and gardening, and she is a closet philanthropist. She resides with her family in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Edited by Dominick Sorrentino

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