The Cicero Experience

A Path to Reduce Customer Attrition? Or 'Why I Fired my ISP...'

2010-05-25T15:17:00.001-04:00

Do you have a process to handle the second call differently to the first?

I just changed my DSL provider of 10 years and the major contributor to my decision was the fact that by the fourth call in one morning, the technician was making the same suggestion the previous three had made – that I call back if the problem persisted … and that was after they had read the notes from the previous three failed attempts at resolution. The problem: the fourth agent was no more equipped or empowered to resolve my problem than the first. Of course, when I called the fifth time to cancel my account, I was offered specialist help but by then it was too late. The damage to a long-standing relationship was more than done.
There’s recently been a lot of discussion about First Call Resolution (FCR), particularly as it relates to a measure of customer experience. Common across all the discussion is a lack of agreement on exactly what FCR means and how to define it – and the customer often has an entirely different view to that of the supplier. Also common is the realization that, with the best will, tools and people in the world, there will always be second-call situations.

What's not common is to find a company with a second-call resolution strategy. Second Call Resolution (SCR) is about the process of handling the second call differently from the moment it hits your inbound switch and it may even apply to what appears at the switch as a first call but has resulted from failed self-service or chat attempts. At the recent Call Center Optimization Forum in Tampa (www.callcenteroptimizationforum.com) I took a straw-poll and only one of the companies represented had a specific process to handle the second call differently.

The first step to a second-call resolution strategy is to decide how you will identify the repeat caller. This can be easier said than done, especially since we often can’t even define FCR. Technology exists to match the incoming caller id against the inbound call history but perhaps the easier method is to ask the caller using the first question in the IVR. (For the record, my ISP did identify me as a repeat caller in the IVR but stopped there. Perhaps they were merely measuring failed FCR.)

One thing is for sure, your customers’ perception is your reality, and if the customer thinks it’s a repeat call their frustration is probably high whether you class it a repeat call or not. However you catch it, identifying a repeat call at least gives you the chance to warn your associate before they answer the call.

The second step to SCR is to decide how you will handle the repeat caller. Who gets it? Do you give the option of speaking to the same agent, a supervisor or a specialist? Do you automatically route to a ‘save’ team? Do you treat the call with higher priority, perhaps move it to the front of the queue? The answer will depend on your business model and brand values but it is important that you ask the question and consciously decide. Don’t leave it to chance.

The third step to SCR is to equip and empower your associates to provide resolution. Cicero XM exists to provide associates with the information they need, when they need it but as with the previous steps, the strategy starts with the process and the people, and it will depend on how you decided to route the call. If the second call goes back to the main associate pool, then you have to equip and train everyone for what could be unique situations. If the repeat call is identified up-front as ‘special’ and targeted to a specialist, supervisor or save team, then the group to manage is much smaller, easier to control and swifter to react to change.

It was at the third step where my experience came apart. Yes, the call was identified as a repeat, but once it got to the agent there was no evidence they were handling it any differently. The same diagnostic steps were repeated, I went through the same reboot cycle and I was given the same outcome – the agent wasn’t equipped or empowered to break from the script and deal with the exception case. When, during the fourth call, it was suggested I purchase a new modem, the agent wasn’t empowered to respond to my challenge that a competitor was both cheaper and offered a free modem.

If my ISP had had a strategy to handle my apparently difficult situation before I called to cancel, I would still be paying $12/month more than I ‘need’ to for the security of a known, trusted relationship and, perhaps, it would have been another 10 years before I needed to make another difficult call. Wouldn’t that have been worth the $80 modem to fix the problem?

Golden Nuggets, Takeaways, and Next Steps from Customer Contact 2010, A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, April 18-21

2010-05-14T20:13:00.002-04:00

During the most recent Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact East event in Florida on April 18-21, our roundtable discussion group was charged with collaborating on the Top 10 Best Practices to deliver superior customer interactions. First we explored several questions: Where does exceptional customer experience come from? How do we define an exceptional interaction? Why is customer experience at the top of most companies to do list?

We believe that your knowledge workers in your contact centers are without question the leverage point to exceptional interaction with your customers. That interaction will drive future business, extend the lifetime value of the customer, and in the social media world, that one exceptional OR disappointing interaction, could impact the future buying decisions. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, says that if you make a customer unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. But, if you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends. We believe you must take both an inside out and an outside in look at customer interaction. See what is working and what isn’t. Fix what you can and leave the positives alone.

Studies by the TARP worldwide (www.tarp.com) have shown how the customer experience has a dramatic impact on loyalty and the likelihood to repurchase. According to the research, of the customers that rate experience a 9 or 10 out of 10, 86% would buy again. And those that rate only 7 or 8 out of ten, say only 34% of those would definitely buy again; same as those claiming to be neutral of dissatisfied, so you can see the marked drop off in terms of ratings.

Further research by this same group also reveals that 50% of customers don’t ever tell you their complaint. And of those that do, less than 10% bring the complaint to a manager. Do you listen to the feedback your associates receive from your customers? Do you have a process in place to collect, analyze and respond to the concerns voiced to your front line? I hate to sound like the resident statistician here, but another study shows that the cost to acquire a new customer is 12 times that of retaining an existing customer.

A Harvard Business School study found that a 5% increase in customer retention activities can boost profits from to 25% to 85%. So what makes interaction superior from the customer eyes? Well, our group collaboratively came up with this following. The first one on the list was empathy. But this can’t be false or scripted. It comes from genuine understanding or desire to understand the customer’s situation.

The second is related to the first item by having first-hand knowledge, and I’ll call this “know your stuff”. Advice is better coming from someone who has experienced the product or service, rather than someone who is reading a manual. The next is courtesy, and I think that goes without saying. Next, we identified tailored to the customer. I call that “know me” or the personalization of the interaction. Identify and find the problem before the customer knows it’s a problem. I’ll call that “keep me informed”. If a better deal becomes available, tell me about it! Upgrade my plan, reduce my service fees! Don’t let me find out through social media that I am paying more that I should be paying. Next, I want my calls answered quickly and handled efficiently. I call that “respect my time”. Don’t make me repeat information or provide information that you should have or should know. Heaven forbid I should have to rekey my ID number, my group number and my user number and then when I get to a live agent and have to repeat it again. The last one is interesting and I love this. It’s called expectation + 1. Do the expected but do one more. The example in the group that was shared was one of a valet that provided a bottle of water when they returned your car. Provide something extra, above and beyond what was being expected.

After defining what makes an interaction superior in the customer’s eyes, we collaborated to create the following Top 10 Best Practices to deliver superior customer interactions that can be implemented today:

1. Arrange first-hand product experience for agents
2. Use agents as mystery shoppers, not to check on their peers, but to feel what their customers feel and build empathy
3. Program the IVR so the first option is to speak to a live agent OR enter the self-service channel
4. Route Calls via CTI rather than the ACD – build business intelligence into call routing. For example, give the repeat caller the option to speak to the same agent or escalate to a supervisor
5. Provide a mechanism for Agents to report the complaints and comments they receive from customers and close the loop with the agent when they are addressed
6. Provide a mechanism for Customers to contribute to product or service improvement and inform the customer when their suggestion is implemented
7. Meet the expectation and then take one step further – develop an ‘Expectation + 1’ philosophy
8. Engage customers in the brand experience. Let them know what to expect and then manage to those expectations. Communicate brand philosophy and engage the customer in brand development.
9. Ask the customer, Yes/No, would they buy from you again, when it’s appropriate
10. Find out what is being said about your brand and products ‘behind your back’ in social networks and news media

Optimal Handle Time – Handle Time from the Customer’s Point of View

2010-05-05T08:37:00.001-04:00

Average Handle Time (AHT) is one of the most commonly used metrics in today’s contact center. Most people define it as a combination of talk, email, and chat plus wrap-up and hold time. Some managers take an average of AHT over a period of time and if possible, they further break down the metric by call type, reason, etc. There has been much discussion about AHT over the past year, especially with the emphasis on reducing AHT so agents can take more calls and contact centers reducing costs. There are several issues and dangers of focusing too much on AHT that have been well documented: the impacts on the agent and their work satisfaction and on customer satisfaction and overall loyalty.

In one of Contact Babel’s most recent reports, “The US Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide 2009-2010,” they note that their “Respondents’ agents spend an average of just under 60% of their time on calls, with around 15% of time spent on wrap-up, 11% on administration and 15% on idle time." That’s nearly 40% of an agent’s time not conversing with customers but doing these other tasks. Of course, much of this wasted time could be eliminated through automation of processes such as eliminating copying and pasting, searching for customer information, and many other common redundant tasks. While other improvements such as presenting customer information in a single view and providing agent guidance at the desktop could further reduce this wasted time.

An alternative to measuring AHT and attempting to reduce waste is to measure and manage Optimal Handle Time (OHT). OHT is simply the ideal amount of time it should take based on the customers’ perspective and use of best practices including:

The average cost of each interaction
The revenue generated, kept per interaction
The cost avoided per interaction (compliance, rework, etc.)
The customer experience top box or net promotion lift per interaction

If companies can get a baseline OHT and manage it successfully, it shouldn’t matter if an agent spends another 30-seconds or even a couple of extra minutes cross or up selling another service or product. This applies from the customers experience too. If an agent resolves the original issue and is able to share a promotional offer that benefits the customer, then you’re more likely to have that customer walk away from that experience not only satisfied but also more loyal to your company’s brand.

The trick to all of this is how to measure OHT. Much of this can be done using your existing metric data including call times, customers satisfaction surveys, etc. The key is to understand what your customers are experiencing, indentify areas for improvement, and build your service in providing the optimal service interaction, each and every time. This may include cross/up selling, sending email verification, or even providing additional communication channels such as chat. You can also use technology to better measure each interaction and overall OHT. We are doing that with Cicero XM. We are not only objectively measuring process time but are also:

Helping to identify bottlenecks, opportunities for process time improvement relative to the interaction and FCR
Providing analytics or feeding best of breed BI/Analytics solutions to deliver an optimized user workflow, script, composite view to the contact center floor within hours or days.

As our customers continue to roll out Cicero XM, we will continue to share what we learn, best practices and our thoughts on shaping the customer experience such as moving from AHT to OHT.

Customers Determine the Value of a Process

2010-03-24T15:17:00.002-04:00

As our team wraps up another month of client, partner and prospect meetings, some common themes continue to emerge. First, there is a fast growing realization that the everyday conversations between businesses and their customers have the most direct impact on perceived brand quality and thus customer lifetime value - more so than product or service features. Second, the technology now exists such that customer-centric companies can actually design optimal processes and have information and applications support those processes – versus being forced to create costly manual workarounds throughout the enterprise.

So…on to the common themes of our discussions…

You need to view service delivery from both the inside out, and the outside in. Most organizations that we meet with today start with this key question …what is the experience that we’re driving? Are we really hitting on the Know me, know your stuff, keep me informed, respect me and my time key components that make up an excellent experience? Because there’s this realization that the everyday conversations our CSRs have with customers, x1000 per month, times 12 months, times the 3 year average life of a CSR - start to really add up in terms of making one of the more powerful marketing engines of the entire organization - so this is where brand promises are met or not met. The importance of the interaction, the importance of the experience is taking on serious meaning and significance relative to lowering the cost to add a new customer. And if you’ve got raving fans, if you’ve got net promoters, whatever you want to call them, we’ve all seen the evidence, and the math suggests that great experiences demonstrably accelerate profitable growth. And it also has that double whammy effect, it also significantly reduces the cost of support for each customer, because I think we all know that the happier I am as a customer, the less I am going to call you, or email you, or get into a chat session with you about something other than what might be a possible revenue opportunity for you. There’s less issue, there’s less question, there’s less complaint, and there’s more how do I use, how do I get value, what plan should I be on? So those are the types of things that organizations are starting to look at. And they take what are they trying to drive in the interaction, and they are starting to take a much deeper dive into how work is performed in the customer facing operations within the enterprise.

Companies are starting to shift the focus from how do I wrap process and people around the technology I have, to how do I wrap technology, around great process and around great people.

2010 is NOT the year for process improvement; but the year for customer felt process improvement. It really doesn’t matter that I believe I have a ‘process advantage’ if the customer doesn’t feel the difference. Dr. Gerald Zaltman - one of the leading authorities in science-based marketing at Harvard states: “Customers are driven more by the subconscious sensory and emotional elements derived from the total experience surrounding a transaction than by the tangible attributes of a product or service”. Think about that - sustainable competitive advantage is created at the point of interaction, and the interaction is the experience.

I wouldn’t run another customer-facing organization without a technical capability to design and deliver a smart desktop - one that can automate repetitive workflows, guide employees and customers through their work, present relevant information in an intuitive fashion and give me objective insight into the conversations and the work performed to support them. Customer interactions and conversations determine market share - and now that companies know they can ensure the conversation goes well consistently, there is a responsibility to find an enterprise desktop solution that can pay for itself in-year and provide a competitive advantage millions of times over going forward.

Mike Garner
Chief Customer Officer

Cicero Quickly Integrates Applications in Citrix XenApp and Microsoft App-V Virtual Environments

2010-03-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

Cicero can leverage new virtualization clients from Citrix and Microsoft to integrate virtual applications running at the desktop with other client applications running locally and web-based applications running in a local browser without change to those applications or the presentation server.

Virtual applications have always presented something of a challenge when it comes to integrating them with applications that run locally or in the Cloud.

When all the applications run on the presentation server, integration is performed within the context of the virtual machine where you have full access to the application controls and events.

However, it’s more typical that only a subset of the applications is executed on the presentation server, while others continue to run elsewhere. In this situation you have the choice to integrate the virtual applications using what is little more than screen-scraping technology or use some form of service provider on the presentation server to provide data objects and events to the integration framework. Cicero has and continues to use both of these techniques to good effect but it is preferable to have full object-level integration managed in one place.

With Citrix XenApp Streaming Client or Microsoft App-V and Cicero that object-level integration of virtual with local and cloud-based applications is now possible at the desktop. These virtualization technologies allow an architecture where business applications are managed centrally but executed locally and Cicero provides the framework within which those applications can share data with other application types in a robust and reliable manner without change to the applications themselves.

The decision to virtualize an application is often driven by a need to reduce cost at the desktop — both in terms of the hardware required at the desktop and the burden of maintenance — but that isn’t always consistent with the need of the business or the customer and one size should not and does not fit all. By integrating with the applications at the desktop, regardless of the delivery platform, Cicero is able to support a variety of virtual solution architectures making it possible to leverage the different solution architectures that make the most sense.

Neil Crane
Director of Product Strategy
Cicero Inc.

Bridging the Implementation Divide

2010-02-24T09:27:00.001-05:00

One of the things that I’ve always felt was a shortcoming in this space is the one size fits all implementation process. It seems that implementation is either so technical that it must be the exclusive domain of the IT organization or so oversimplified that it pushes a business into a proprietary language/configuration implementation process. Worse yet is that many products hide implementation details that have major technical consequences which only appear after the systems are rolled out live. There is a better way to make an implementation be a collaborative process between technologists and business operations people.

The software development process has struggled with this problem for decades. For example, think of great, powerful, technical products with clunky, non-intuitive interfaces or, at the other extreme, flashy web interfaces with not much meat to them. Today, more and more companies that build software have moved to an architecture called Model, View, Controller or MVC for short.

While MVC is a technical architecture it has impact far beyond the software technology team. Briefly, MVC specifies that there are three major facets to software: the model - how data is organized, the view - how data is presented and the controller - how data is used with rules to calculate or make decisions. These three areas work together yet can be worked on or implemented by different teams with very different skill sets.

In the example of a website, by moving the technical aspects out of the page design, a graphics artist could own the whole presentation that the end user sees without having to worry about the technology behind the site. This is extremely powerful as it enables parallel implementation and more importantly, targeted skill sets for the implementation.

While architecting Cicero XM as a product we internally chose the MVC model, however the light bulb moment came when we realized if we extended this model to the implementation of the solution we would have a product that was truly unique in the market and would change the way solutions were implemented in our space. Often we hear that the business does not have enough operational control of their software and must rely on their technologists, typically IT, to make what seem like small changes. IT, rightly so, wants to protect their enterprise assets from being changed without their knowledge, and wants to have control or at least insight into the changes being made. This dilemma is a byproduct of the way solutions are typically implemented today.

With Cicero XM’s design separation and abstraction, IT assets are “insulated” from the daily operational changes that embody the fast paced business environment we live in. The Cicero United Data Model™ (UDM), a core component of Cicero XM, is the key to this game-changing paradigm. For the first time ever, the business can change all of their presentation views, scripting/guidance, workflow, and even the shape of their abstracted data, while allowing IT to control how the enterprise data is connected to the abstract view. This line of demarcation allows business control and change while being isolated from the source of the data, be it web services, databases or legacy applications.

This model could not work without providing the business and IT a dedicated set of designers specifically tailored to their skill sets and responsibilities for the implementation. Cicero XM Studio is an integrated studio environment that consists of six designers. The designers can be deployed in any combination within the studio to meet the needs of the organization. For instance an organization can configure a deployable version of Cicero XM Studio to only contain the Script/Guidance designer. This studio could then be given to a training department to convert training materials into live interaction specific prompting and guidance to be presented at the precise moment of impact during an interaction. Another configured studio may contain just the presentation designers. A third studio may contain the workflow designer and data modeling tool. While yet another could be configured to provide the technologists with the Activity designer and United Data Model Binding and assignment designers.

We have found that this separation of control and design has greatly improved the speed of implementation as well as change management for both the business and IT allowing both organizations to work within their areas of expertise. While at first this separation and MVC might have sounded like a technology detail, hopefully you can see how this approach changes the way organizations can now work seamlessly in ways they never thought they could. Finally, Cicero XM provides flexibility and control of the operational aspects to the business while maintaining isolation and protection of enterprise data and systems for IT.

Tony Castagno
Chief Technology Officer
Cicero Inc.

Customer Experience Management - Building Trust to Create Success

2010-02-05T10:41:00.007-05:00

This week Cicero announced the upcoming release of our new family of Customer Experience Management (CEM) products - Cicero XM™. Cicero XM is designed to address all components of the Customer Experience while improving Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Insight throughout the Enterprise. Wikipedia says that “[t]he goal of customer experience management (CEM) is to move customers from satisfied to loyal and then from loyal to advocate. … Customer experience solutions provide strategies, process models, and information technology to design, manage and optimize the end-to-end customer experience process.”

That is a fair description of what Cicero XM is all about. It is built to allow its users to create a superior customer experience by allowing the Business Process Analyst to work from the customer’s point of view to design the optimal interaction experience. In Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. ask, “[w]hat’s it really like to be your customer? What is the day-in, day-out 'customer experience' your company is delivering? How does it feel to wait on hold on the phone? To … wait for a service call that was promised two hours ago, come back to an online shopping cart that’s no longer there an hour later? Or what’s it like to be remembered? To receive helpful suggestions? To get everything exactly as it was promised? To be confident that the answers you get are the best ones for you?”

As Peppers and Rogers further point out, a successful customer experience is based on trust. If your customer doesn’t trust the information received during an interaction, she will not be a customer for very long. If the agent doesn’t trust the systems he is using, he will not be an agent for very long. Trust is the bandwidth of change and one of the key components of trust is what Dennis Reina and Michelle Reina refer to as “Transactional Trust” in the Reina Trust and Betrayal Model™. Transactional trust contains three core components: Contractual Trust or “Trust of Character”, Communication Trust (“Trust of Disclosure”) and Competence Trust (“Trust of Ability”). Each of these trusts are created incrementally and are reciprocal between the parties to the transaction. There is not space here to go into detail about all the aspects of trust, but trust me, it is one the most critical components of success. It is also one of the easiest to destroy. To quote Peppers and Rogers one more time: “Customers may forgive honest mistakes but will never forgive dishonesty.”

In many cases, the perception of a company is driven by the performance of its contact center; a 2002 Purdue University study showed that 92% of U.S. consumers base their image of a company on experience with company’s contact center. That same study showed that 86% of those calling to express dissatisfaction with a product or service will stop using the company if their call experience was negative.

Cicero XM was designed and built specifically to help companies address these issues. For example, one major source of problems in contact centers is agent frustration. What causes this? One significant reason is what the Reinas would refer to as an unintentional betrayal of trust caused by a failure to give the agents the correct tools to allow them to do their jobs easily and effectively. When an agent has to use multiple applications to retrieve a customer’s record, or has to cut and paste data between applications or ask a caller to wait for a slow system, that agent cannot possibly be 100% focused on attaining a trust relationship with the caller. Cicero XM’s scripting, data integration through the United Data Model™, call flow management and agent workspace all combine to convert this:

into this:

A clean, organized workspace that presents the agent with exactly the information needed, when it is needed. A workspace that is completely context sensitive based on call type that can be determined from DNIS/ANI or other information provided by an IVR, the caller or other data source.

The unique Cicero XM Studio allows screen layouts, scripts and even call flows to be created and modified by the contact center’s own Business Process Analysts. With Cicero XM Enterprise, changes can be automatically deployed to Cicero XM Desktop so that all agents have the latest information at all times.

Cicero XM Studio can help further enhance the trust relationship between agent and management because now when an agent makes a suggestion as to how a screen could be better laid out, or how a call flow could be made more efficient, it is no longer necessary to get IT involved. If the change makes sense, it can be implemented and deployed in hours or days rather than weeks or months. The agents will see their ideas come to life and will therefore feel trusted and empowered. This attitude will come through to the customers as well as they sense the agents’ enthusiasm and loyalty.

Providing your customers with accurate information in a timely and concise manner will go a long way towards building their trust. Over the next several weeks and months, you will see more about how Cicero XM is revolutionizing customer experience management and will help you transform your customers’ experience with your company.

The Purdue study referenced earlier also points out that only 16% of customers reported contact experience that exceeded their expectations. That is pretty poor. However, 95% of those people (who had those great experiences) will stay with that company. Cicero XM will help your company exceed expectations and transform your customers into “raving fans.”

Jim Hunt
Director of Product Development
Cicero Inc.

Cicero Inc. Announces New Product Offerings and Adds Two New Customers: Interactive Response Technologies, Inc. and Innoverse Services Network, Inc.

2010-02-02T11:20:00.000-05:00

Cicero XM Enables Business Transformation to Improve Customer Interactions Across the Enterprise

Cary, NC—February 2, 2010—Cicero Inc. (BB:CICN), a leading provider of desktop automation and integration solutions, announced today it is launching three new products, collectively called Cicero XM™, to help contact centers and enterprises improve their Customer Experience Management (CEM). Cicero also announced two new customers that will be implementing Cicero XM to improve business user efficiency, effectiveness, and operational insight in their contact centers: Interactive Response Technologies, Inc. (IRT), a contact center outsourcer, and Innoverse Services Network, Inc., a technology solutions company specializing in helping clients execute ‘outside-the-box’ projects.

“IRT’s focus is on providing the best customer experience possible for all our call center clients and we believe that you do this by delivering superb service with each customer interaction,” said Martin Lehtio, EVP of Operations. “We are excited about using the Cicero XM technology to build an intelligent desktop where our agents can better focus on customer interactions and strengthening customer relationships rather than the individual technology tools they are using for certain lines of business.”

As a CEM solution, the new Cicero XM technology helps companies transform their customer interactions by simplifying workflow, automating tasks, providing context-sensitive scripting and automatically sharing data between applications, while leveraging existing IT investments. Cicero XM, short for Cicero Experience Management, includes three new products:

Cicero XM Desktop™ - A dedicated agent desktop solution that includes user guidance in the form of context sensitive scripting and managed call flows, a United Data Model™ that provides a single, holistic view of the data regardless of source, the ability to easily create composite applications and toolbars, a TAPI-compliant soft-phone console, and a flexible workspace to drive business user efficiency and effectiveness.
Cicero XM Enterprise™ - An enterprise solution for managing interactions, including cross-application workflow, call scripting, analytics, telephony integration, United Data Model™ persistence, and a powerful database to provide operational insight. Cicero XM Enterprise adds the full power of enterprise CEM to the XM Desktop.
Cicero XM Studio™ - A visual toolkit used to integrate applications and configure Cicero XM products. Cicero XM Studio enables business analysts and other non-IT personnel to make changes to end-user scripts, call flows, and composite screens without risk to underlying applications or business logic.

“We look forward to using Cicero XM to collect data about application usage on desktops and then using this data along with Cicero XM to integrate applications, automate workflow and provide a new unified desktop - a smart desktop in BPO environments,” said Edward J. Goldgehn, VP and Lead Solutions Architect, Innoverse Services Network, Inc. “Our clients come to us looking for solutions to improve user productivity, simplify training, cut costs, and deliver superior end-to-end service. The solutions we can now deliver with Cicero XM will help us do just that.”

“Unlike other CEM and unified desktop solutions, Cicero XM helps companies non-invasively integrate existing applications and enterprise data so business users can leverage an intelligent desktop to improve productivity, cut costs and deliver a better customer experience,” said Tony Castagno, Cicero CTO. “Combining Cicero’s surface integration expertise with workflow and United Data Model technology, we have created the most powerful Customer Experience Management solution in the marketplace today.”

About Interactive Response Technologies, Inc.

Founded in 1993 as a software company for the Call Center Industry, IRT has been operating contact centers since 1995 for a variety of Fortune 500 clients. Today, IRT operates 5 state-of-the-art contact centers in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma with international partnerships that span the globe. We have earned our reputation of unparalleled service and results by focusing our efforts on people. We believe in creating the right culture and building systems and processes that are focused on the “right behaviors”. Our dedicated teams are fully committed to delivering the desired outcomes for our clients. IRT partners with a variety of Fortune 500 clients in the Financial Services, Telecommunications, Healthcare, Insurance, Retail, Transportation, Utility and Education industries. Value-added solutions and services provided to its client-partners include customer service, tech support, customer loyalty and retention, acquisition and business-to-business programs.

About Innoverse Services Network, Inc.

Innoverse Services Network, Inc (IS.Net) was founded in 1999 as part of a multi-faceted organization of companies focused on delivering unique technology-based solutions to businesses of varying sizes and industries. IS.Net's principals each have many years of business process management experience through all phases of entrepreneurial business development and operation. Learn more about Innoverse at www.is.net.

About Cicero Inc.

Cicero, Inc. provides solutions that enable business transformation of enterprise interactions for Global Fortune 500 and other companies and government organizations. Cicero’s XM technology delivers this capability via a unique and innovative combination of integration, automation, presentation and analytics capabilities, built to transform customer interaction into the most powerful marketing and branding asset a company can own. Learn more about Cicero at www.ciceroinc.com.

Cicero, Cicero Integrator, and Cicero XM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cicero Inc. and/or its affiliates. Other company names and/or products are for identification purposes and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

Safe Harbor: Except for any historical information contained herein, this news release may contain forward-looking statements on such matters as strategic direction, anticipated return on investment, business prospects, the development and capabilities of the Cicero product group, new products and similar matters. Actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this release of a variety of factors, including risks that customers may not adopt the Cicero technology, which Cicero Inc. may not successfully execute its new strategic initiative and other risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For a description of other factors that could cause such a difference, please see Cicero Inc.’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Contact:
Keith Anderson
Director of Client Services
kanderson@ciceroinc.com
919-380-5092

Cicero Inc. Acquires Assets of SOAdesk, LLC; Closes Initial Round of Series B Preferred Offering

2010-01-19T11:41:00.001-05:00

Acquisition Unites Best of Breed Desktop Integration and Leading Customer Interaction Management Software; Combined Products Offer Complete Customer Interaction Management Platform to Reduce Enterprise Costs and Help Companies Deliver an Improved Customer Experience

Cary, NC—January 19, 2010—Cicero Inc. (BB:CICN), a leading provider of desktop automation and integration solutions, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of SOAdesk, LLC’s innovative Customer Interaction Management (CIM) technology – United Desktop® -- through an Asset Purchase Agreement dated as of January 15, 2010 among Cicero, SOAdesk, and Vertical Thought, Inc., an affiliate of SOAdesk. Simultaneously, Cicero has also closed an offering of an initial round of its Series B Convertible Preferred Stock.

As a result of the acquisition, Cicero will provide a new set of product offerings called Cicero XM™ that combine Cicero’s leading desktop integration software with SOAdesk’s United Desktop® technology. Under the terms of the acquisition, Cicero has agreed to pay a minimum of $2.525 million over the next three years through a combination of stock and cash for the assets of SOAdesk. In addition, SOAdesk could earn additional consideration based upon certain earn-out formulas within the contract. The initial Series B round of Convertible Preferred Stock, in excess of $1.35 million, will provide funding for the acquisition and working capital to launch the new products.

“This acquisition combines our expertise in surface integration with SOAdesk’s United Desktop technology, enabling us to provide our customers and partners with the tools and solutions they need to deliver exceptional customer interactions while leveraging an enterprise’s existing technology assets and data. Partners and analysts all agree – to win and keep customers, you must be able to work faster, smarter and provide better service to your customers,” said John Broderick, Chief Executive Officer for Cicero. “Today, we can say that we believe we provide the first and only CIM solution that excels in all three areas – while allowing clients to adapt to changes in their business model practically overnight. This combination enables real business transformation for our clients and we’re excited to be able to deliver it all under one roof.”

The acquisition makes Cicero, a pioneer in desktop integration and automation, a much broader provider of solutions in the contact services marketplace, estimated by many analysts to be in excess of $1.5 billion per year. By acquiring SOAdesk’s United Desktop® technology, Cicero is now the only company to offer organizations a complete customer interaction management platform that leverages an enterprise’s existing technology assets and data, and repurposes it to provide employees the information they need, when they need it and how they need it, to be able to serve customers faster, more accurately and in a brand-positive way.

“Cicero’s sweet spot has been its ability to integrate disparate applications quickly and seamlessly, providing a very rapid return on investment for its customers,” added Broderick. “Our core technology will be enhanced by SOADesk’s United Desktop, which together will allow customers to choose and grow from surface integration solutions up the solutions stack, to complete customer interaction management solutions.”

Complementing the existing Cicero team, Tony Castagno, CEO of SOAdesk, will lead the technology team as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Jim Hunt, CTO of SOAdesk, will head product development, and Mike Garner, President and founder of SOAdesk, will lead worldwide sales.

Cicero’s current desktop product, Cicero Integrator, will continue to provide award-winning application automation features, and Cicero XM will allow customers to use the power of desktop integration to share data, automate processes, and unify desktop applications, as well as improve customer interactions using the many new features from the United Desktop technology.

Cicero XM will expand Cicero’s existing desktop integration or surface integration solution with new features such as enhanced workflow, a powerful new workspace, and a new configuration toolkit. This combined offering provides an enterprise model for truly managing customer interactions using the best of breed applications and systems that customers already have. Cicero XM will:

Enable business transformation through dramatic improvements in business user efficiency, effectiveness and operational insight.
Help companies improve the overall customer experience they deliver by combining enterprise data from the desktop with telephony and other sources, creating long-term customer loyalty and value to the enterprise.
Reduce costs and increase profitability of each customer interaction using new features such as dynamic scripting, reporting, integrated messaging, and many others.

Under the direction of Tony Castagno as Cicero’s CTO, the company will continue to innovate and leverage emerging technologies to maintain its leadership position in the Customer Interaction Management space.

“My experience with desktop integration has shown that the ultimate goal is to provide organizations with the tools they need to deliver the best customer interaction possible,” said Castagno. “Cicero XM builds upon surface integration by leveraging existing technology investments and adding new features such as dynamic scripting, cross application workflow, telephony integration, and universal enterprise data access, to improve both the agent and customer experience while reducing costs.”

About Cicero Inc.

Cicero, Cicero Integrator, Cicero XM, and United Desktop are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cicero Inc. and/or its affiliates. Other company names and/or products are for identification purposes and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

Safe Harbor: Except for any historical information contained herein, this news release may contain forward-looking statements on such matters as strategic direction, anticipated return on investment, business prospects, the development and capabilities of the Cicero product group, new products and similar matters. Actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this release of a variety of factors, including risks that customers may not adopt the Cicero technology, which Cicero Inc. may not successfully execute its new strategic initiative and other risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For a description of other factors that could cause such a difference, please see Cicero Inc.’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Contact:
Keith Anderson
Director of Client Services
kanderson@ciceroinc.com
919-380-5092

Reflections on the Call Center Optimization Forums 2009

2009-11-30T16:26:00.008-05:00

By Mike Garner

I was fortunate enough to attend several Call Center Optimization Forums this year; the first in St. Louis and the last in Anaheim. Representatives from practically every line of business - profit, non profit and government got together to share stories from the front lines. From fashion to medical supplements. From airlines to automobiles. Although the industry and company purpose varied, the challenges and ideas discussed by the attendees, tended to center around 5 key areas this year. Mentioned in no particular order, here are my abridged comments on the conversations that took place:

Voice of the Customer

The big deal - customers decide who wins and by how much in practically every market today, so having a good handle on how they perceive your company, your products and your service has become mission critical, especially in a down economy when growth is expensive without a brand promoting customer base.

Current State - most attendees said they had some form of customer survey process in place yet many lacked actionable insight

Trend - invite every customer to speak their mind. Ask them often and make it very simple for them to give feedback. The hardest part: deciding the few questions that really matter to ask your customers.

Work force management

The big deal - most contact centers still report “days met” for service levels when economical staffing and excellent customer service delivery happen 15 minutes at a time.

Current state - contact center professionals are working hard to find models for hiring part time and split shift employees that can perform at a high level when the amount of time they spend in the craft is often that of a full time employee.

Trend - work at home model explosion as the quality of the workforce coupled with the ability to more accurately staff intervals is leading more and more practitioners to “find a way” through some of the HR and security concerns once holding back the non brick and mortar play.

Hiring

The big deal - turnover strands and destroys the huge time and monetary investment in building the muscle memory needed to deliver a consistently differentiated level of service. Every person lost costs an organization several months of lost productivity.

Current State - the best way to avoid turnover is to identify, attract and hire a better FIT for your center. Many attendees mentioned they had a formalized hiring process aimed at finding employees that will fit their particular culture, work type and schedule. And many of those same people didn’t know if it was working.

Trend - Shocking news but news you can use: it turns out the best way to hire is to take high performance contributors in the center, test them and then look to hire close to the model. Then test the speed to performance and retention of those hired using the instrument and feed back their results into the model so it can “learn” and continue to help you hone your hiring target, message and approach. One novel idea I heard - put job ads on pizza boxes in the area you’re trolling for talent. Clever way of getting your job opening noticed on campus.

Interaction Insight

The big deal - the experience is the differentiator in most highly competitive businesses and yet it is rare to find good, objective and subjective feedback on how well tuned the interaction machine really is.

Current State - most attendees claimed a voice monitoring/recording solution in place. Some have screen capture to go along with voice. A growing yet smaller number suggested they are using screen analytics to tag certain field entries (like customer id or account number) to the interaction recording so they can respond to the customer if warranted post call.

Trend - more frequent and intelligent use of interaction tags such as products ordered, credits applied, account status and account ID so you can filter and focus your monitoring and review efforts to those types of calls or situations where there is real money on the line.

Intelligent Desktop

The big deal - The avalanche of scattered information to be combed through at the desktop is costing companies employees, customers and money.

Current State - some attendees are trying to go uniform first and optimal second. Typically that means trying to migrate to a new CRM system or application suite to retrain all their people on how to use the new application and then they will tweak it to fit their needs over time. Still others are trying to get a few applications pushing and pulling data from one another to try to cut down on duplicate work using desktop or surface integration tools.

Trend - there is growing agreement that much of the customer experience and productivity gap left in customer contact is driven by complexity at the desktop and finding a way for the technology to take more of the burden off the individual employee can have a significant positive ripple effect on the organization. A customer interaction management system can reduce long training paths, cut down on employee frustration and turnover, shorten handle times and ensure the customer knows about solutions relevant to his or her needs. So more and more, attendees are looking for ways to automate manual work processes, guide agents to the next best action or offer, present relevant information about the customer, product or process all on one screen and then tie what’s happened on the desktop to IVR or switch data so they can isolate cost, revenue and quality metrics by call type. Getting a customer routed to the person that can best serve them was yesterday’s dilemma. Making sure that person can deliver a brand-positive and profitable interaction during the moment of truth is where today’s winners and losers of markets will be determined. And that’s precisely why contact professionals are looking to customer interaction management (CIM) solutions for a competitive edge.

Cicero Certified as a Windows 7 Front Runner

2009-11-06T11:41:00.000-05:00

We’re delighted to share that Cicero has completed testing and certification to qualify for the “Compatible with Windows 7” title. This certification is based on extensive analysis, input from domain experts and feedback from Microsoft’s OEM , ISV and IHV partners on the challenges they and their customers face. Windows 7 testing targets specific, commonly identified application issues to ensure that Cicero is compatible and reliable on Windows 7. Cicero is also one of the first companies to support our customers in the Windows 7 environment, making us a Windows 7 Front Runner. We’re excited to add yet another operating system to the vast list of applications that we already do support and look forward to leveraging Window 7 support on behalf of our customers.

Cicero Wins American Teleservices Association Technovation Award!

2009-10-27T15:45:00.004-04:00

Cicero has been honored by the American Teleservices Association (ATA) with a Technovation award for the Cicero Platform. During the three-day National ATA Convention and Expo, Cicero was judged by a panel of representatives from the software and contact center operations industries to have provided an innovative solution for a problem facing the majority of contact centers; namely the need to bring together data from a variety of applications in a rapid, cost-effective manner.

The Cicero Platform is a leading framework for organizing, integrating and enabling an organization's various enterprise software applications to operate seamlessly on users' desktops. Cicero goes beyond the more typical server-based solutions by non-invasively exploiting the interaction between the applications and the platform on which they run. A set of tools and a structure ("Framework") makes it simple to integrate applications that aren't typically designed to work together onto one desktop, eliminating incompatibility issues while creating operational efficiencies.

We're delighted to have received this award and we're looking forward to continued "technovation" in the future!

Cicero to Present Frost & Sullivan eBraodcast

2009-09-10T09:33:00.003-04:00

Today at 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT, Cicero will participate in a Frost and Sullivan ebroadcast titled "Is Reduction in AHT the Holy Grail? How Improving Processes Can Yield Bigger Results!"

Reducing call time has become the Holy Grail of cost savings in call centers. Although some managers have been successful in shaving a few seconds on calls, many others are falling far short of reducing AHT, improving customer satisfaction, or, in general, improving operating costs.

A better approach is to focus on process improvement where it makes sense - at the customer service reps desktop. By focusing on process improvement at the desktop, call centers can improve customer service reps effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction - faster than other approaches.

Join Frost & Sullivan, Customer Relationship Metrics and Cicero for a fun, interactive eBroadcast to learn how process improvement should be the goal of call centers and how it can yield results faster than focusing on AHT alone. You will learn:

-Why it is important to focus on reducing the complexity of the work environment for customer service representatives -Why the customer service rep as the focal point is the key to process improvement -How to understand the CSR work environment, their challenges and areas of process improvement -How companies focus on process improvement as the primary goal and the impacts on CSR effectiveness, efficiency and costs -How desktop integration allows you to use your existing technology investments and can be implemented in a matter of weeks and pay for itself in a few months -How well you remember facts through fun trivia from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”

To register, visit www.ebroadcast.frost.com/holygrail and join us as we discuss call center process improvement where it makes sense – at the CSR desktop. Share and exchange your experience and viewpoints with our panel of experts during our live, interactive Q&A following the presentation.

Happy Labor Day!

2009-09-04T12:58:00.007-04:00

Wishing everyone a happy holiday, and if you're headed to the beach, watch out for sharks! Our Director of Systems Engineering & Professional Services Clint Babcock ignores this advice every time. Here are some pictures he has taken of his fearsome swimming companions!

Back Office and Front Office Application Integration

2009-08-26T09:49:00.003-04:00

Enterprise organizations have two sides to their operations systems; the back office and the front office. The front office comprises the various consumer facing departments including sales and marketing, finance, investment, customer service and so on. These are the elements that are projected externally, those that define an organization, what it does, and how it benefits its customers and users. The back office applications, on the other hand, are the systems that work beneath the surface, providing the backbone of an organization. These include IT, Accounting, Manufacturing, HR and Administrative, among others. Each of these elements usually relies on one or more applications to house its proprietary information, and yet none may exist in a silo. Back office applications not only support the functions of the front office, but they also support each other. Administrative usually touches elements of HR and accounting, IT is usually a layer of every department; as such, these systems and applications are inevitably required to speak to each other, information must be shared and accessible, and perhaps most importantly, it must be a seamless process.

This is where application integration comes in: at the point of contact, at the desktop. A desktop solution provides the common ground for each of the back office and front office applications to share information as necessary, and those who need to access that information can do so on an integrated environment, rather than jumping back and forth between programs. The time saved, not to mention the ease and convenience, is of immeasurable value on a large scale when it comes to efficiency and employee satisfaction, which ultimately translates to better productivity and customer service.

Why BPEL?

2009-08-04T10:24:00.003-04:00

BPEL builds on existing infrastructure. It does not attempt to change existing applications and systems. Rather, existing service points are front-ended with a Web Services veneer. Once this occurs, the implementation of each service-point can be changed, adapted, modernized at the leisure of the organization that controls it.

Consider that a doctor’s office needs the copy of an x-ray for a patient from a hospital. The hospital’s x-ray administrator receives the request, including the requester’s credentials and billing information. This starts a process where first the requester is validated. If successful, first a digital store, containing digitized versions of all x-rays taken in the last three years are kept, is queried automatically. If the x-ray is found there, it is transmitted over the Internet to the requester. If it is not found there, the request is conveyed to a position where older, non-digitized x-rays are kept. In this case, a manual search of existing x-rays is performed. If found, the x-ray is conveyed to the doctor’s office by messenger. Finally, the x-ray administrator charges a credit card supplied for the order. Note that this action triggers a business process on the system of the credit card processor.

It should be possible to change any step without effect on the whole process. BPEL promotes this. For example, a new requester validation method might be introduced for affiliated physicians, or the requester validation may change as result of regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA. The billing step can change to allow for a new payment method. It is not reasonable to expect that the doctor’s office or the hospital will modify all participating IT systems before reaping the benefits of BPEL-driven processes.

Individual steps provide services that make up the Business Process. Some of these steps are by nature manual. Searching for a physical x-ray in a storehouse is always manual. In other cases, while the long term goal is to have the step automated, it remains manual until it can be automated. Automating a step can take a long time, and this should not hold up the automation of the overall business process through BPEL.

That a step is manual means that it is performed by a human operator. The human operator not only reacts to the request received, but while doing so, also needs to consult and investigate using a number of applications and databases. Having all these applications work together and operate as an entity greatly enhances the operator’s efficiency and reduces the possibility of errors. This is where Cicero makes the human operator part of a BPEL-driven process. While doing so, it also provides the human operator with all the advantages of a Cicero integration.

Cicero is, like BPEL, based on and uses standards such XML, XPath, SOAP, WS, WSDL. As a Web Services Provider, Cicero is particularly suitable to be integrated in BPEL architectures and to be used in BPEL nodes in a number of scenarios, such as:

Nodes that include a human operator.
Nodes where the systems that need to be accessed are hard to integrate in n-tier architectures, or need to be integrated using GUI mechanisms.
Nodes where the implementation timeframes make n-tier architectures unsuitable. Remember that Cicero integrations are much faster than competing three-tier architectures.

Cicero implements a human services architecture. Within the context of BPEL, this makes it an indispensable part of any BPEL-driven business process that needs to include humans.

Partner Training & Workshop

2009-07-31T11:45:00.011-04:00

This week, fourteen people from five different countries and eleven different companies attended the Cicero Partner Training and Workshop—a four-day workshop aimed at arming attendees with a clear knowledge of how to build a Cicero-based desktop from scratch across a variety of platforms. Since Tuesday, the attendees have participated in a series of practical sessions with introductory lectures and discussions on each topic, including:

The Business Problems Cicero Solves
The Proposal Process
Engaging Cicero Inc for pre and post sales support
Marketing: Lead Generation, Distribution and Management, Events

The first three days of the program focuses on the design, implementation and deployment of real-world Cicero-based integration solutions for those that will use Cicero to integrate desktop applications. Finally, the end of the third day and the entire fourth day focuses on how to sell Cicero, the sales and proposal processes as well as Cicero marketing. At the end of the program, all participants are sent home with a package of takeaways they can reference should one of the practical topics from the program slip their mind.

The Cicero team takes away a great deal, too; not only do we have the opportunity to meet with some of our clients in person and see them interact with Cicero products, but the workshops also allow us to hear live feedback about the products and how they can be even easier to use.

Automating Business Processes

2009-07-30T10:14:00.001-04:00

Executing business processes across organizational lines – whether across two companies or multiple departments of the same company is a timely topic for many reasons: The bottom line is that the more organizations can automate their processes and interactions, the lower their cost of doing business. In the past, there were many impediments to automating business processes. Just getting organizations to connect their dissimilar systems was a substantial effort. There were protocol and security issues associated with such direct connections. Making changes to systems at either end could make such connections inoperable. In most cases, there are dependencies on the existing IT systems as well as territorial issues that create inertia to changing existing systems.

The solution to executing business processes across organizational lines has to include the requirement that existing systems and communication methods should not need to be changed. Rather, any business process execution related infrastructure has to be built on top of existing IT and communication infrastructure. In this, the BPEL does an excellent job.

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

2009-07-28T13:19:00.002-04:00

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) turns simple Web Services that are stateless and short-lived into business processes that are long running and stateful. BPEL is based on existing and well-understood standards, such as XML, XPath, SOAP, Web Services and WSDL. Web Services are often used in IT infrastructures as a veneer to make existing systems available for new uses. Hence, the value of BPEL: It does not attempt to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it reuses IT infrastructure already in place. This makes the use of BPEL a realistic plan.

BPEL also shares a common philosophy with Cicero. Remember that it is often not feasible to re-architect corporate applications to provide well-designed APIs for relocation to n-tier systems. There may be technical obstacles (applications cannot be neatly segregated into client and server pieces), organizational obstacles (applications controlled by “external” entities cannot be relocated to the middle tier) or time-to-market reasons (it takes a lot of effort and money to move applications to the middle-tier). As a result, often, it is best to use what is currently available and in use, even if the indicated direction is to a server- or portal-based architecture. This is where Cicero shines. You do the integration on the client, reusing what is already in use. Cicero provides a quick solution that works well and a measurable ROI.

Events - Automate and Simplify at the Desktop

2009-07-27T14:54:00.004-04:00

There are a number of ways that you can automate and simplify business processes at the end user desktop using Events. In general, our customers are using events to

Automate data look ups
Trigger a new or repeat task when there is a change to the application interface or when an end user does something with the mouse or keyboard
Listen for events and then trigger new events (e.g., when data changes in a field)

This allows companies to provide additional functionality across applications to eliminate redundant tasks, flag and notify management when a particular action takes place (e.g., a high valued customer is on the phone), enforce business rules for compliance, look up information in from another source (web service, database, etc.), provide on screen assistance to a worker when they are completing a particular complex set of tasks, etc. The list could go on.

Events, along with shared data or context, are probably the most important feature of desktop integration. It is at the desktop where the integrator can monitor not only the applications but more importantly, what the end user is doing and make changes by automating and simplifying their actions through integration. This is also where true process improvement takes place because companies can make applications and the people who use them work more efficiently.

Making Applications and the People Who Use Them More Eventful

2009-06-30T17:27:00.004-04:00

What if you could take any action by an end user (a mouse click, a press of the Enter key, etc.) and have it trigger another action? What if you could flag a certain action such as entering a high dollar amount in a banking application and have it immediately warn a manager? What if you could have an application notify you when it is not available or automatically log in an end user when their mainframe session times out? What if you could capture any of this information for analytics and future reporting?

Cicero Events

All of the above are possible using Events. As with sharing data between applications, events are part of Cicero. Using Cicero Studio, a development toolset comprised of a collection of wizards, integrators describe the interface of applications in terms of a collection of event-driven processes known as Tasks. The events that trigger a Task may be the result of the end-user interacting with the integrated application or they may be internal events triggered by other processes, such as a change to the shared data from various applications. There are two types of events:

Cicero Events – are generated by the Cicero event manager itself (such as a change in data, page activation and application shutdown events) and other application-initiated events
Application Interface Events – are generated by an event monitor in response to user interaction with the application interface, such as changing an entry field or clicking on a button.

After the integrator describes the events and the data to be shared without writing code, they use the configuration files with the Cicero Runtime uses to manage both types of events. The Runtime contains an event dispatcher that handles event notification between Cicero processes as well as handling the monitoring and subsequent notification of application interface events, such as mouse clicks and button presses. In addition, the Runtime can collect any pre-defined event data for reporting, analytics, and compliance purposes.

We’ll be continuing our examination on how customers are using Cicero events in future postings. Stay tuned!

Little Things Make a Big Difference: Elevating the Customer Experience without Breaking the Bank

2009-06-25T16:35:00.005-04:00

Last week we facilitated a conference workshop with the above title at Call Center Week in Las Vegas. During this interactive session lead by Alex Aversano, Manager of Enterprise and Channel Sales, Cicero, Inc., there were two general themes from the participants that emerged:

Reciprocity: People want to be treated as they would want people to treat them.
Trust: It is vital to build trust between a caller and a Customer Service Representative (CSR)

Participants also shared the following insights:

Hire only people that want/can work in the CSR role – better screening “look for people that have customer assistance in their ‘DNA’”, tell them the truth about the environment when they interview.
Create consistent/common environment – have regular meetings (between peers/peers and peers/managers), create a culture with use of common nomenclature and processes, provide examples by leadership.
One attendee shared an example that her company had a set of Seven Service Standards that the representatives had to memorize and use including: Everyone is a guest (internal = in hotel, external = anywhere else), 10/5 rule - within 10 feet acknowledge the person, within five feet address the person and offer assistance. Take Ownership; if you ask someone if they need help, it is your responsibility to make certain the Guest is helped “you touch it you own it”.
Provide the representatives with what they need/want – regular training, access to information, provide “job coaches”; try to teach “empathy.”

At the end of the discussion, Alex proposed the following Top 10 Little Things that Can Make a Big Difference in Call Centers:

Walk the floor
Be the customer
Focus on behaviors
Engage the caller
Listen to your representatives
Listen to your customers
Streamline process execution
Accelerate access to information
Take ownership, build trust
The customer defines success (creating a relationship) LTV = Long Term Value

We appreciate everyone that attended and shared their thoughts and experiences. It was a great session and we look forward to seeing you at another event.

Integrated Desktop Solution Validation Study - by Customer Relationship Metrics

2009-06-23T16:16:00.010-04:00

The determination of success of any solution or implementation is predicated on the quantification of a positive effect. A solution or implementation can be declared successful only when the current situation is improved by the change, by the addition or the removal, by an implementation. Success within the contact center is measurable. As a matter of fact, in the contact center there is nothing that cannot be measured for its effect. Gut reaction and anecdotal information has no place in the contact center beyond identifying what needs to be measured - what essentially needs to be proved or disproved.

Return on Technology Investment in the Contact Center (RoTI)

Prior to the commitment for an implementation, the management team must assess the value proposition of the alternatives to make a selection. Only after the selection and implementation can the success of that decision actually be quantified. The effect of technical changes in the contact center must be measured in order to validate and quantify the degree of the return on the initiative.

Measure, measure, measure

Customer Relationship Metrics (Metrics) takes its responsibility seriously in all measurement within contact centers. An implementation of a unified or integrated desktop has many measureable outcomes related to operational metrics however changes in such metrics at the expense of the agents or the customer is, by definition, not a success.

Recently, Metrics designed a research study to examine the outcome of an integrated desktop solution. The focus of this research was on the effect of the Cicero toolset, which developed an integrated agent’s desktop for a large business process outsourcer. One of the goals of the implementation was to reduce the burden on the agent during peak calling seasons, which in this case, was “open Enrollment” for a significant Medicaid/Medicare provider. The original Cicero implementation was a pilot for 50 users with a broader deployment across the organization after positive improvements in operational metrics.

Does greater transactional efficiency lead to greater employee satisfaction?

A positive effect in operational metrics was quantified but now the measure of success must include determining whether or not the integrated desktop had a positive effect on agent performance and satisfaction. Metrics designed an agent impact test (questionnaire) to assess the second component of Cicero’s value statement to this organization.

Prior to deployment of Cicero’s integrated desktop in two very large contact centers, agents completed the questionnaire which focused on job satisfaction and perception of the customer experience by the contact center. Four months after the implementation, the test was administered again. The study was designed to avoid the error often made by organizations and sought to prove the RoTI by measuring, making a change, and then measuring again.

The Effect of the Cicero Implementation

Quantifiable improvement was found between how the agents felt before the Cicero implementation as compared to after. The following attributes had mean scores which were statistically different between the pre-implementation measurement and the post-implementation measurement.

Relating to their performance, the agents felt:

More confident in their expertise to enroll callers in the healthcare plan.
More confident in their expertise related to issue of the healthcare changes.
That the customers were less impatient with the amount of time it now takes to get the information they need.
Customers call back less frequently because they did not get the answer they wanted from another agent.
Customers were overall more satisfied customer of the healthcare program.

Relating to their job satisfaction, the agents felt:

More satisfied with their job itself in general.
That the objectives and goals they must reach more fair.
Are more satisfied with the supervision of their work.
There is more fairness in the way the company treats them.
Are more likely to recommend employer to a friend looking for a job.

The Return on Technology Initiative is Positive

Through the implementation of Cicero, these very large healthcare services contact centers gained operational efficiency, allowing agents to more quickly access relevant information and related research and to improve first call resolution. An important additional benefit of improving employee confidence in their own ability to serve customers leads to higher levels of performance and greater employee satisfaction. The RoTI quantified for Cicero will directly contribute to an improvement in the organization’s performance.

About the Author

Jodie Monger, PhD is the President of Customer Relationship Metrics, LC (Metrics) and a pioneer in conducting research to improve human capital and organization performance via the contact center. The multi-award winning team at Customer Relationship Metrics provides the expertise required to improve top, middle, and bottom line performance by improving the economics of internal and external relationships. Dr. Jodie’s new book, Survey Pain Relief can be found on Amazon.com.

Great Content and Fun at Call Center Week Las Vegas!

2009-06-18T14:20:00.011-04:00

This is the first year that Cicero Inc. attended and sponsored at the IQPC 10th Annual Call Center Week in Las Vegas, June 14-18. We have met several senior level management contacts who run call centers around the world and a number of vendors in the exhibit hall.

This year the primary focus on everyone’s mind is how to improve the customer’s experience while still reducing costs. This theme was repeated in almost every conversation and a number of the keynote addresses and workshops. We found our story to be very compelling as Cicero is used to automate customer service representatives’ tasks such as eliminating copying and pasting, implementing single sign-on and other useful tools to help them be more efficient, effective, and empowered.

The other part of our story also resonated: integrating existing applications to reduce costs and improving customer service. Overall we found an equal number of people who need to reduce costs (i.e., reduce Average Handle Time, training time, after call work, etc.) as those who want to enhance the customer experience (i.e., provide more information to CSRs, increase first call resolution, etc.).

It has been a great event; we even had one of our account executives win $500 at the poker table!

Accelerating Merger & Acquisition Success Through Successful Application Integration

2009-06-17T16:44:00.002-04:00

FACT: The majority of today’s Fortune 500 corporations exist through the process of merging and acquiring companies.

FACT: While Information Technology (IT) is not usually a business driver during this Merger and Acquisition (M&A) process, companies realize that if the technology cannot be integrated in a timely manner, key benefits such as reduced cost, operating efficiency, employee effectiveness and market share will be lost.

FACT: Successful integration of such environments is an iterative process, best done in a phased, non-disruptive manner where effective integration technology encapsulates application functionality in a non-intrusive, service-oriented manner making systems available for reuse.

The successful integration of disparate business systems and complex processes can be achieved by choosing the right mix of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions, based on non-invasive approaches that are implemented within a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Successful integration will:

obviate information silos in the new corporation
provide unified views of the business and its customers
accommodate future growth
enable the corporation to focus on and achieve its business objectives

Using Cicero it is possible to rapidly assimilate the best features and capabilities from the existing, disparate applications of both companies. Its unique integration approach is completely non-invasive. There is no need to make any modifications to the underlying application code. This reduces integration complexity, which in turn reduces risk and speeds up the integration effort, thereby accelerating time-to-value. Cicero makes it possible to integrate applications without change to their existing user interface or, where the business needs dictate, to provide composite data from historical sources to new, customized interfaces. The result is an intuitive, task-oriented workstation with fully integrated applications that seamlessly share data relevant to the customer context.

IT Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions

The urgency and complexity of a merger or acquisition in today’s competitive global environment means that the emerging enterprise must do everything it can to accelerate the successful completion of the merger and get on with business. Planning for and managing change is of vital importance. The IT challenge, in particular, is daunting. IT must:

Select the best enabling technologies
Quickly deliver the best information to the right people
Leverage existing IT assets
Position for emerging technologies
Resolve inconsistency and incompatibility
Make knowledge workers already coping with considerable change effective, and
Do all the above while being as transparent as possible to the customer

Cicero is a powerful, flexible, forward-looking product that will minimize the risk and time-to-value of any application integration effort. Cicero’s proven integration capabilities will maximize a corporation’s ability to accelerate the integration process, turning disparate business systems into cohesive, collaborative tools. Cicero:

Leverages existing technology
Positions the organization to integrate emerging technologies and standards within a service-oriented architecture
Provides a method to manage existing and new business processes
Minimizes training through the reuse of familiar applications
Delivers real-time and historic data across applications for compliance and security requirements
Eases employee transition, and
Quickly puts the combined information technology assets of the new enterprise to effective use supporting the company’s business objectives.

What’s a (new/unified/automated/integrated/enterprise) desktop?

2009-06-12T11:25:00.005-04:00

There are a lot of terms out there to describe the “new and improved” desktops and I often get asked what all of these different terms mean. What is the difference between a unified and integrated desktop? What makes a new enterprise desktop actually new? What is an automated desktop? In general, they are all names for the same thing. Whether you are talking about a unified desktop or a new integrated enterprise desktop, the end result should be to provide a working environment where data is shared, processes are automated, and navigation is minimized through some type of user interface. In short, the “new desktop” is one where knowledge workers can be more productive.

The confusion comes in on how to best achieve and deliver this “new desktop.” Solutions come in a variety of flavors but they are generally either server or desktop based. In server-based solutions, applications are integrated on backend (data is shared, processes are automated, etc.) and a new UI is served up through a browser or similar client. (e.g., virtualization products such as Citrix) Desktop solutions do the same thing but at the local client. Some of the new Rich Internet Applications provide some of this desktop integration. Cicero can be used at the desktop, server or both

Monitoring for Compliance

2009-06-10T10:33:00.009-04:00

Existing software applications that monitor systems for compliance requirements and business rules focus on the security and regulatory requirements for information technology systems (e.g., BindView, SecureInfo). These applications monitor the organization’s IT infrastructure to ensure that they are compliant with permissions, security, back-up and recovery etc. They do not provide a real time view of the data in systems across the enterprise. A few business systems do provide reporting and other monitoring tools but they have limited capabilities. Most organizations rely on individuals to review transactions and information in business systems and enforce regulations. However, this leaves the organization vulnerable to reacting to issues rather than monitoring for them before there is an issue. Desktop automation and integration solutions such as Cicero provide a compliance monitoring solution that is easily configurable and deployable and that can monitor multiple applications across platforms to provide real time compliance monitoring.

Solutions such as Cicero empower corporations and government agencies to effectively monitor information in applications and business systems to meet compliance and security requirements. Ideal for Compliance Managers, Risk Managers, and other compliance-related positions, they provide real time information for identifying compliance issues and enforcing regulations. It does this by using business rules that actively monitor system transactions and publishes the results in a variety of formats.

The compliance monitoring solution such as Cicero contains a set of rules that are configured and installed on desktops or servers within an organization. These rules contain the business processes that need to be monitored in applications and the actions that need to occur once these rules are invoked such as notifying a compliance officer or reporting information on a web page. The results can be completed in real time or saved to a database for further analysis. In addition, it effectively takes existing applications and extends them to provide real time information that can be displayed in a new application such as a website or a service such as Rich Site Summary (RSS). Finally, organizations can also provide the capability to display several applications in a composite view that show the results of monitoring each business system.

Proactively monitor systems to identify potential problems before they occur
Create rules to monitor specific compliance and business requirements such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA, and Basel II
Enforce business rules such as those required in banking and securities transactions
Report on information in business systems in real time
Publish data on web pages, RSS, email notifications, or in other applications such as reporting systems
Augment applications and create composite views of systems for compliance
Deploy at the desktop and/or server level and monitor any application running on any platform including Windows, 3270, Java, Web, Citrix and others
Store data in a database for future analysis
Reduces the need to review data in business systems by providing the information that is needed based on rules

Non-Invasive Integration

2009-06-10T10:33:00.008-04:00

Application integration is the capability to get unrelated software applications to work together as if they were initially implemented to work together. Cicero allows non-invasive application integration, i.e. it is not necessary to modify the programs that make up the applications being integrated. Application implemented fundamentally different approaches and programming languages can be integrated. For example, application written in Visual Basic or C++ to run under Windows can be integrated with application written in Java or running within Internet Explorer. Furthermore, the integrator does not need to understand the complexities germane to the application type being integrated. From the integrator’s perspective, integrating a Windows application or a 3270 application is very similar.

For example, an occurrence in a 3270 checking account application may cause a Siebel application to display a different screen. If the occurrence in the 3270 application indicated the availability of a new user account number, then the Cicero integration would cause Siebel to become aware that this account number is now available. Accordingly, Siebel would now display the user those records that pertain to that account number.

As can be seen from this example, it is possible to create an environment for the user where all the applications automatically show pertinent information at any given time. For example, in a call center environment, all applications display data about the caller, without the CSR having to navigate to the caller’s information in each application. This can save the CSR substantial effort, allowing her or him to focus on the caller’s questions rather than the navigation through individual applications.