"Measuring the Customer Experience: How, What and When"
presented by Elaine Cascio

Chartwell Best Practices Summit on Self-Service IVR and Web-based Applications
Scottsdale, AZ
June 12-13, 2008

One of the keys to measuring customer experience is doing something few companies ever do - and that's stepping into your customer's shoes. Only by actually experiencing what your customers do on different channels and media, across channels, in a store, on the web, on a phone call, at a kiosk, or via text messaging - can you begin to measure the experience. Only after you've completed this baseline (and you'll probably have lots of action items as a result!), you can establish goals and key metrics and tackle the job of pulling together data from all the different sources. We'll cover:

• How to put together cross channel customer maps in order to understand the customer experience.
• Identifying key gaps and customer dissatisfiers within and across channels.
• How to develop important customer centric measures of success.
• Understanding the difference between reports and metrics and how to measure customer experience success.

Interop
with Don Van Doren and Marty Parker

Las Vegas
April 27 – May 1, 2008

“Creating Your Enterprise Unified Communications Plan”
presented by Marty Parker

Unified Communications (UC) offers enormous opportunities for dramatic enhancements to your communications environment. But there is a real need to organize these opportunities into a coherent and cost-justified plan for your company or institution. This one-day workshop will provide you with the information and tools to create that plan for your enterprise.


“Communications-Enabling Business Applications”
presented by Don Van Doren

In addition to combining different communications media, Unified Communications also allows enterprises to add communications functionality to business applications that previously lacked such tight integration. UC vendors claim that you can drive worker productivity by adding voice or instant messaging directly into, for example, an ERP or spreadsheet application. This session will closely examine such visions of "communications-enabled business processes", to help you understand how much is hype and how much is feasible in the near term


“Justifying Unified Communications Investments Today”
presented by Don Van Doren

Almost everyone believes UC will be a major factor in the networks of the future, but how do you justify investments in today's UC technology--and what elements offer the best payoff? This session will offer real-world examples of UC investments that paid off, and will describe how the payoff was achieved. It will also offer guidelines on whether you can bank on "soft" productivity enhancements to justify the cost of implementation--and whether such gains will pass muster with your CFO.

VoiceCon Orlando 2008
with Don Van Doren and Marty Parker

Orlando
March 17-20, 2008

Sessions include:

Preparing an RFI/RFP for Unified Communications
presented by Marty Parker

Implementing Unified Communications requires knowing what to buy and what requests to make to the vendors. This tutorial will help you get the most out of UC for your enterprise by providing a framework for creating and issuing an RFI/RFP targeted at one or more of the top five ROI-justified UC applications:

• Resource Access and Problem Resolution
• Collaboration Workspaces
• Contact Management
• Seamless Information for Mobility
• Information portals with Communication

The tutorial outlines the solution elements required for basic and advanced versions of each application, analyzes ROI justifications, and provides the information you need to shop for and select the necessary UC technologies.

The Company as Contact Center
presented by Don Van Doren

Agents often need to tap expertise that doesn't reside within the contact center, and that creates challenges ? knowing if the person is available, how he/she prefers to be reached, etc. Unified Communications tools are becoming available that can be incorporated into contact center communications systems and improve the process of connecting the right specialists to customers, colleagues, contact-center agents and help-desk staffs. In effect, experts throughout a company can become an adjunct to the contact center, and this can affect everything from business processes to customer loyalty. This session examines how companies will use these new capabilities.

We consider some key questions, including:

• What's currently available to link agents and customers to specialists who can immediately address detailed questions?
• What's likely to be available over the coming 12?24 months?
• What frameworks are emerging for deploying Unified Communications tools and systems within contact centers?
• What are the elements to measure in preparing an ROI analysis?
• What are the organizational and training implications of deploying these new systems?
• How will Unified Communications change buyer-seller relationships in the contact center market?

Communications-Enabled Apps
presented by Marty Parker

Everyone agrees that applications are the payoff for IP Telephony, UC and converged networks, but talk is cheap. In this session, you'll hear technologists who have implemented communications-enabled applications and are realizing business benefits from the effort.
 

Some key questions we will explore include:

• What types of applications can yield significant business benefits when integrated with communications capabilities?
• What are the technical challenges involved in implementing and running these communications-enabled business applications.
• How does an enterprise IT organization support communications-enabled business applications most effectively?
• What are the different issues involved in implementing communications-enabled business applications via internal development teams, versus working with ISVs and other outside providers?

Integration Challenges I: CTI, CRM and Customer Intelligence Systems
moderated by Don Van Doren

The more you know about your customers, the more productive your contact center can become. There's a new set of metrics that are on the minds of contact center managers -- customer defection saves, service-to-sales conversions, and cross- and up-sell ratios ? but the ability to produce those metrics requires a new level of hardware and software systems, all of which must interoperate to present contact center agents with an accurate history of the callers. This session will explore the emerging systems and analyze the leverage points for integration.
 

Integration Challenges II: Can These Systems Ever Get Along?
moderated by Don Van Doren

The contact center brings together a wide array of communications and network equipment and services. Some adjunct systems have been important parts of a contact center infrastructure, and now that we're adding unified communications and new customer intelligence systems, the number of piece-parts will further expand. Contact center executives, who have long faced a major a challenge getting traditional elements to work together, find that the future is likely to be even tougher. This session will examine ways to ease this long-standing struggle.

"Leading Practices in IVR Design: Turn Your IVR from a Liability to an Asset"
presented by Elaine Cascio and Linda Van Doren

March 14, 2008, Online

A poorly designed IVR application can cost hundreds of thousands – even millions – of dollars in low usage, irate customers, and lost business. On the other hand, a well designed IVR can save your call center anywhere from $5 to over $10 on every completed call, as well as improve customer satisfaction.

In this seminar, you’ll learn the keys to designing successful, customer-focused IVR applications. We will:

Cover the basics of design – and redesign – for both touchtone and speech recognition
Provide a step-by-step overview of the process from development to implementation
Discuss how to keep your IVR application running smoothly
We’ll also discuss deciding whether to use touchtone or speech recognition and the keys to success when transitioning from a touchtone to a speech application. And we’ll include ways you can evaluate your own IVR applications in line with best practices to increase use.

October 20, 2006

Most self service applications, IVR, ASR and web are created with business cases that focus on realizing internal benefits such as reducing costs, or freeing up call center staff. But as more organizations strive to increase self-service usage further, the reality is gradually dawning: If customers don’t love to use your applications they simply won’t use them at all!

Behind every successful self-service application is a clearly articulated Self-Service Strategy. It drives applications, usage, success rates, and customer satisfaction. In this seminar, we’ll discuss how you can build a self-service strategy and the roles different channels play in customer contact.

Plus, you’ll learn the keys to designing easy to use, customer focused, self-service applications. We’ll show you how to consider (and involve) the customer at critical stages in the design process.

We’ll discuss various aspects of usability related to both web and telephone self-service:

• Ease of access and navigation
• Relevance and integrity of content/functionality
• Scripting and use of language
• Personalization/dynamic content
• Maintenance/accuracy
• Help and support for users

And we’ll offer tips for continuing to monitor your applications to identify improvement opportunities after implementation.

"IP Contact Centers Technology: Does Performance Match the Promise?"
presented and moderated by Don Van Doren
Voicecon Fall, San Francisco

August 23, 2006

We’ve all heard about the great things you can do with IP contact centers – save money with virtual agents and centralized applications, and the promise of presence integration and a whole new level of integration with CRM and other business applications as part of the larger Unified Communications trend. This session will help you understand the technical underpinnings of these innovations, and the extent to which they are actually feasible today.

• What are the infrastructure elements of a next-generation contact center? What are the challenges in implementing these elements?
• What new protocols and standards are required to integrate a next-gen contact center with the rest of the enterprise? How mature are these technologies?
• What new applications are available to the contact center? How broadly deployed and functional are they?
• What is the status of specific contact center technologies such as: Truly “virtual” agent deployment and call routing; “expert anywhere” presence implementation; deep CRM integration.

"Success Factors for Unified Communications"
moderated by Don Van Doren
Voicecon Fall, San Francisco

August 22, 2006

Speakers will present their key expectations and “must have” factors for Unified Communications to succeed, from both the customer and supplier perspective. This session will highlight the barriers to adoption and the go-to-market factors that must be addressed.

• What technical and business-enabling features will UC have to deliver to gain traction in the enterprise?
• How will enterprises measure the gains and thereby justify the effort and expense of migrating?
• What pitfalls do UC technology suppliers face? Which deliverables will they have the most difficulty delivering?
• What long-term business and technology trends will UC have to ride to succeed? What changes could derail UC?

"Migrating to Unified Communications: Getting There from Here"
panel discussion led by Marty Parker
VoiceCon Fall, San Francisco

August 21, 2006

This session will describe the most likely paths to unified communications, with case study and building block examples. The speakers will present options for upgrading and integrating your PBX, voice messaging, conferencing, user clients and devices. You will gain insight into where and when to invest. Key questions include:

• Which elements of your current network infrastructure will not be relevant to UC, and how do you phase these out?
• What new technologies are required, and how do you implement them?
• What variables determine which path you should take to UC, and how quickly you move?
• What are the organizational and technical challenges to beginning and sustaining the migration?

"Transitioning to IP: The Questions you Need to Ask"
presented by Don Van Doren
ICCM 2006 Conference, Chicago

August 16, 2006

Some patterns are emerging, with opportunities to seize and pitfalls to avoid. This session outlines what’s working and what’s not, presents highlights of cases to illustrate key points, and answers these questions:

• What benefits are companies seeing from IP?
• What are the triggers that prompt the migration?
• What are some of the hidden factors you must consider when planning the transition?
• What circumstances suggest you’re better off making modest upgrades to existing systems rather than undertake a full conversion?
• What special issues should you be aware of in IP migrations and full conversions?

"Strategic Insights into Building an Effective Multi-Channel Center"
presented by Elaine Cascio
ICCM 2006 Conference, Chicago

August 14, 2006

Customers now do business with contact centers through many different channels, but their experience is often disjointed and inconsistent. This workshop outlines what it takes to build a compelling multi-channel customer experience. You will examine real-life examples of organizations that provide smooth and consistent high-quality service, as well as some that don’t.

In this workshop you will learn:

• Why the multi-channel customer experience matters
  
• What it takes to build the right center for your customers
• The various multi-channel options and their key benefits
• The Common mistakes to avoid
• Case studies that illustrate success and failure

"Customer Segmentation in Self Service"
presented by Linda Van Doren
SpeechTEK 2006, New York

August 9, 2006, 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

The key to successful segmentation is not “forcing” customers into a specific mode of service, but providing applications and services that different customer groups prefer to use.  Companies segment customers in many different ways – by demographics, customer value, location in the relationship lifecycle, or a combination of factors. Find out how segmentation works for self-service channels and when to consider different applications and different channel mixes.  Understand how to deal with different generations of customers, and how so called loyalty programs can encourage channel use by different customer segments.

 

"Building an Effective Self-service Strategy"
presented by Elaine Cascio
SpeechTEK 2006, New York

August 9, 2006

Establishing an effective and efficient self-service strategy is the key to successful applications. In this session you will learn how to integrate consumer, business and technical perspectives to derive an effective self-service strategy. Learn how to optimize both cost reduction and increased customer satisfaction and retention as primary objectives of self-service. Choose the appropriate technologies (speech, CTI, Web, call routing) to support your self-service strategy.