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Within the mid to large-sized call center, recording
and monitoring systems have become an almost absolute
requirement. In the past, recording the voice
conversation along with some CTI information such as
caller-ID or an account number was all that was
required. Today, however, different means of
communicating with your customers has evolved to
include e-mail, chat, and even VoIP. Thus, it is
important that newer generation recording and
monitoring systems are "all encompassing" to include
these new media types, and architected to allow for
future media types. Many of today's advanced products
also capture an agent's screen and associate it with
the voice recording of the call to truly capture the
customer and agent experience.
Another important trend with monitoring products is
to not just provide record and playback functionality,
but also provide evaluation tools, analysis, and
coaching of agents to improve the customer experience.
By capturing calls, followed by evaluating calls, then
performing analysis of the evaluations (as well as
reports), followed by coaching of agents, and finally
capturing future agent calls for re-evaluation, the
complete cycle of both the customer experience and the
agent's performance can be realized.
In today's competitive world, it is very important
to not only build customer loyalty, but to keep it.
That is why CRM products have become a multi-billion
dollar business. Tracking the customer experience from
"cradle-to-grave" even if the call is transferred
several times across multiple call centers helps
ensure a happy, loyal customer. Mistakes will surely
happen, but with the proper CRM solutions, pinpointing
or even being aware of these problems will be
possible.
TMC Labs took a test drive of NICE Systems' CEM
(Customer Experience Management) v.8.5, which includes
this cradle-to-grave functionality due to their
integration with the CenterPoint Solutions product,
which NICE Systems recently acquired.
We asked Lior Arussy, NICE Systems' senior vice
president, global marketing, what differentiates NICE's
product from their competitors.
"Well, we offer a single unified platform that
supports every type of recording application,
including quality management, selective recording,
total recording, and record-on-demand. And we can
capture any type of interaction: voice, VoIP, e-mail,
and other Web interactions along with synchronized
voice and agent screen recording," said Arussy.
He continued, "Our solution does a whole lot more
beyond multimedia recording. We have integrated this
product with a number of unique applications for
customer experience management. These include our
industry-leading quality management application,
NiceUniverse, the NICE Analyzer, a comprehensive data
analysis tool, NICE Learning, which provides on-line
e-training triggered by quality evaluation scores,
NICE Feedback, a Web-enabled customer survey tool, and
Executive Connect, another solution we have pioneered
which offers dial-up or wireless executive monitoring."
TMC Labs interviewed one of NICE Systems' customers
to assess how the product worked in a real-world
scenario in addition to our lab tests. We spoke with
Jennifer Goodman, who is the senior manager of
customer relations at Earthlink. She was responsible
for determining which recording and monitoring system
to purchase and has spent nearly three years on the
project.
Goodman said, "A few years ago, we looked at
Witness, Nice, Converse, Teknekron, Dictaphone, and
one other company. We had an online RFP with 250
questions for them to fill out. One major requirement
we had was it had to be a CTI event, but we don't want
to pick up the phone to play back any event. We're an
Internet company so we don't require people to cross
technology. If our customers are online, we don't make
them get offline and call us. That's why we were ahead
of the game with chat and e-mail. If our people are
online, we want them to stay online to access the
monitoring."
Goodman said that they spoke with several of the
traditional recording companies and they said the
technology she was requesting didn't exist yet. She
continued, "So we decided to partner with someone that
was interested in really making a difference in the
future. Both Dictaphone and NICE said there was
something to what we wanted so we had NICE and
Dictaphone do a bake-off onto our switch and see how
they ran. After that, we decided to go with NICE and
have been very happy with our decision."
Goodman commented on the improvements she realized
after implementing the NICE system. She said, "We took
monitoring to a different level. Typically, the
supervisors have access to the evaluations and they
share that with the call center reps. Our system doesn't
work that way. We have 7,800 employees, 65 percent of
whom work with customer contact. In our organization,
every employee has access to the NICE system. They can
play back their own events. It goes to the heart of
individual accountability and responsibility."
One major snag several years ago was getting enough
recording and monitoring channels to handle thousands
of employees. Goodman told the vendors, "Well, make it
a Web app!" If you stream the audio across an IP
network to a browser interface rather than tying up a
telephony channel, the scalability would be much
higher. We commented to Goodman that it seemed so
obvious that calls should be streamed across the
network. However, several years ago, her vision of the
"perfect" recording and monitoring system utilizing
the IP network instead of using traditional telephony
channels was heresy.
We asked how the recording and monitoring system
affected the customer reps. Goodman replied, "Reps
want to go in and see their evaluations. With
employees in the call center, we put so many pressures
on them (take more calls, handle a new product), that
we really have to look back and say 'you know what,
they have a right to know what is expected of them, if
they are meeting those expectations, and improve if
they need to.' So now when they have their performance
review, they walk in and say to themselves, 'Hey, I
know I'm doing a good job. I've looked at all my
evaluations and customer surveys,' and so they expect
a certain percentage increase. On the flip side, when
a person is not doing well, they know. When they walk
into the room, trust me, they know. They know they
were doing something wrong, such as visiting an
inappropriate Web site."
TMC Labs asked if Earthlink was content with the
NICE product. She answered, "We've had the system up
and running for over a year with no problems. I still
go to the major trade shows, and no one has anything
that can even touch this. No one has an
enterprise-wide solution that is bypassing the phone
system and using the network -- at least that I have
seen."
TMC Labs determined that NICE Systems has a wide
breadth of features as well as integration with
several third-party software vendors that are leaders
in their respective fields. For instance, NICE Systems
has an ActiveX control that can be embedded into
Siebel, Vantive, Clarify, and more that would allow an
agent to initiate recording at the touch of a button
or even record automatically when the agent enters a
certain field or screen. NICE Systems also integrates
with leading workforce management products, such as
those offered by Blue Pumpkin, to determine if the
recording schedule defined coincides with the agent's
work schedule. Since recording technologies have
become so mission-critical, NICE Systems has also
integrated their product with Computer Associates'
Unicenter TNG, a comprehensive system
health-monitoring tool to observe NICE Systems
resources, including servers and databases.
As if that's not enough, in the next release
(version 8.7), NICE Systems will integrate with
leading e-mail management systems such as KANA, eGain,
Genesys, and Lucent. This will allow a supervisor to
search within NICE Systems' CEM, based on the e-mail
address or the subject of an e-mail, and then be able
to play back the screen recording of the e-mail
response. This would show real-time the typing speed
of the agent, typos, grammatical errors and the like,
as well as the content of the message -- all of which
are important for quality assurance and training
purposes. The next release will also have VoIP
recording capabilities, supporting up to 24 channels.
Also, in the next release will be integration with
Astound's training module. For instance, you could
trigger a particular Astound training session if an
agent's evaluation scores reach a certain threshold.
Whichever item the agent performed poorly on can
determine which training session is initiated.
INSTALLATION
NICE Systems always installs the server software
themselves, so we had no need to perform this step. We
did examine the initial configuration of the system,
administration, and the installation of the client
software. Initial configuration required first
defining a site with NICE Administrator, and then
defining agents, creating groups, servers, and the
input and output channels. We also configured each
agent with certain privileges and assigned them to
specific groups. The interface for configuring the
system was very well organized and featured the
ability to administer multiple sites or systems across
an IP network. Overall, installation was a breeze and
initial configuration was relatively simple
considering the complexity of the system.
DOCUMENTATION
We found it odd that the Administrator manual didn't
discuss the screen recording functionality, although
the screen recording functionality is discussed in the
other manuals. Also, we couldn't find a discussion of
how to install the client app needed on the agents'
PCs to capture the screens.
Otherwise, we were quite pleased with the
documentation. All of the manuals were very well
organized, contained a plethora of screenshots, and
each had good tables of contents and indexes.
Explanations on how to perform certain functions were
very detailed and comprehensive.
FEATURES
The Nice Logger features an impressive 38,000 hours of
online storage, but will double with the release of
version 8.7. NICE Systems licenses several switch
manufacturers' proprietary code in order to support
direct digital integration with the switch, saving the
need for digital-to-analog converters. Support for
digital integration includes switches from Aspect,
Ericsson, Lucent, NEC, Nortel, and Siemens. The system
supports extension recording, trunk side recording, as
well as direct connection (DS0 card) to the switch.
Support for 120 digital channels or 210 E1 trunks is
available on this product. For redundancy, an optional
"N+1 Logger" chain is available to automatically
re-route recording duties to a standby Logger in the
event a Logger fails.
NICE's CEM can capture audio and the screen for a
complete "picture" of the customer experience. In
addition, you can view the status of your agents for
monitoring and recording interactions real-time.
During playback of recordings, evaluations can be
performed to score the agent's performance. The audio
logger supports "no compression" (64 Kbps PCM), 2:1
compression (32 Kbps), and 4:1 compression (16 Kbps).
In addition, its best compression algorithm features a
compression ration of 11.4:1 or 5.6 Kbps. Other
compression formats are also available.
Other features include:
- Free seating support.
- Call recordings via e-mail, including both voice
and screen capture.
- Trigger a recording based on scheduling
criteria, as well as if a particular software
application is launched. Also a recording can
execute once a particular window or data-entry
field is entered.
- Query recordings using over 50 search criteria.
- Playback via phone or across LAN using speakers.
- Synchronized playback of voice and screen.
- ODBC and SQL-compliant database.
- Can ignore silence to conserve disk space and
reduce playback time.
- Initiate recording by detecting sound level,
external trigger (radio squelch), human voice
detection, as well as triggered by the phone going
on/off hook.
- Optional, automatic label printing with unique
media and logger ID for archiving to a DAT/AIT/MO
cartridge. A label is printed as a cartridge is
ejected from the Logger.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
Other than the installation and administration, there
are essentially four main components that we examined
during our testing process. We looked for usability
and ease of use, as well as feature-set for each of
these components. These components included scheduling
calls, querying calls, playback and monitoring of
calls, and evaluating calls.
Scheduling Calls
Defining a new call schedule was surprisingly simple,
yet very feature-rich. From the NiceUniverse
Scheduler, we could view all the existing schedules,
edit a schedule, or define a new schedule. We added a
schedule called "Tech Support" and proceeded to define
the parameters, such as "Daily," the hours, the start
date, recording mode (random, sequential, or
percentage), and various other settings. We liked the
graphical user interface for defining schedules very
much. We could highlight particular hours to record
simply by left-dragging the mouse across the 0-23 hour
time block. Within the "Conditions" tab, we could
define the call direction (inbound, outbound,
internal, or all), the media (voice, screen), and the
recording conditions that included DNIS, ANI, dialed
number, and client ID (entered via DTMF or database
lookup). Within the third tab ("Agents"), we could
assign certain agents to this particular schedule
program. Overall, we found scheduling to be one of the
most intuitive and powerful aspects of NICE's CEM.
Querying Calls
We tested the ability to query calls for playback and
were very impressed with its powerful querying
capabilities. From NiceUniverse Evaluator, we could
filter based on audio calls only, audio and screen
capture calls, locked calls, calls by a specific
agent, time or date, duration, CTI information,
customer number, and much more. One filter capability
call center managers will find useful is the ability
to query all calls that have not been evaluated yet.
Your favorite or commonly-used queries can be stored
directly within the NiceUniverse Evaluator GUI for
easy future execution.
Playback And Monitoring Calls
Playback of calls is done directly from within
NiceUniverse Evaluator, which makes sense since this
is where we "drilled down" to the calls we wished to
examine. There is a list of several recordings. The
recordings with just a speaker icon are just audio and
the recordings with a speaker overlaid on a computer
monitor include both audio and screen capture. Also,
recordings with just a computer monitor depicted are
screen captures with no audio. This made it very easy
to quickly determine the type of recording. In
addition, the fields for each recording show the
duration of the recording, the agent's name and
extension, whether or not the call has been evaluated,
and other useful information.
Monitoring an agent was very easy to do. A status
icon depicts whether an agent is active (on the phone)
or inactive. We were able to highlight one of the
agents, right-click, and choose Monitor. Our phone
extension then rang and we were able to listen in on
the voice conversation. Simultaneously, on our screen,
NICE Systems' screen monitoring application popped up
and we were able to view the agent's mouse movements
and keystrokes in real time.
In addition, we could have right-clicked on the
agent and chosen "Record" to initiate a manual
recording of that particular call. If at any point we
then clicked on the "Stop" button, we were then
prompted "Stop Recording," "Stop Monitoring," or "Stop
Recording and Monitoring," which we thought was a nice
feature. Another nice feature is that this product
supports the ability to allow multiple call center
managers to monitor the same agent at the same time.
With most monitoring products you are limited to just
one person monitoring a particular agent at any one
time.
Evaluating Calls
There are essentially two parts to evaluating calls.
One is to evaluate each call using forms created with
NICE Systems' form designer. The second part is to run
reports based on these evaluation forms to determine
meaningful statistics. We tested both parts and were
pleased with the results.
First, we needed to design an evaluation form. A
form designer wizard guided us step by step in
creating our first evaluation form. We were able to
add questions such as "Did the agent state his/her
name?" with a yes/no choice to the form. In addition,
we could define scoring and weighting formulas, using
a check box, scorable list, or weighted combo
controls. Overall, creating evaluation forms was a
snap. Actually using the forms was just as easy.
Simply by right-clicking on a call recording and
choosing Evaluate, you then are displayed the list of
evaluation forms.
Next, you choose which form you want. At this point
you have the option of "scoring" the agent's
performance using the evaluation form. However, if you
haven't previously listened to the recording (or
watched it in the case of screen capture), you can
actually play back the recording from within the
evaluation form. This integration of the evaluation
forms with recording playback certainly makes a call
center manager's job less painful and more efficient.
After applying some evaluations to several
recordings, we tested the included sample reports. The
sample reports were excellent, and included useful
statistics and a very readable format. We asked NICE
Systems if the reports were designed using Crystal
Reports. They told us not in this version, but that
the next version was actually going to be converted to
Crystal Reports, which will make it even better. One
final note: the reporting can actually compare several
evaluations of the same call across multiple
evaluators to ensure fairness, and establish
benchmarks. Call center supervisors will find this
particular report an invaluable tool.
There are some final points we discovered during
our tests. First, the product supports field level
security by agent, so you can hide certain database
fields from being viewed. Second, the product supports
an "enterprise view" so you can see all of your
recorders even if they are located in separate sites.
The recordings will actually store the first or last
48 DTMF digits, which can be useful in troubleshooting
an IVR or determining what information the customer
needs. Finally, the product supports automatic
deletion of the oldest audio after its been archived,
saving a manual process.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
The query expression builder doesn't allow for
parentheses to define nested and more complex queries.
Although we believe NICE Systems tried to keep this
feature as simple as possible, we would like to see
this capability in a future release.
The GUI ratings would have been a perfect 5, except
the server contains an abundance of separate
applications for monitoring various parameters. Some
are just screens displaying scrolling text status
messages. We feel these separate programs (which take
up a lot of screen real estate) should be combined
into a single administration/monitoring interface,
making it much more manageable. Since it runs on
Windows NT/2000, perhaps supporting the Microsoft
Management Console (MMC) interface might be
beneficial.
We notice there is a button on the toolbar to "Evaluate
next call." Pressing this button would automatically
highlight the next call on the screen and start the
evaluation process. We couldn't find an "Evaluate"
button to evaluate the currently highlighted call. We
attempted to see if the toolbar could be customized to
add this button, but were unsuccessful. Adding this
Evaluate button would be a nice plus for those that
prefer toolbar buttons as opposed to using right-click
functionality to evaluate a call. One other minor
usability suggestion would be to allow the F2 key (an
Explorer function) to rename a folder within
NiceUniverse Evaluator.
Selecting what media types are recorded (voice and
screen in version 8.5) is determined by each scheduled
program in the Scheduler. You may want to record a
particular department's voice calls, but you may only
want to record some of the agents' screens. As the
product stands now, you would need to define two
separate schedules, and assign one set of agents to "voice
and screen" and the second set to just "voice." We
would like the ability to assign default recording
media types directly to each agent within the
administrator program. If we assign John Doe to "default"
to both voice and screen recording, then anytime John
Doe is scheduled to be recorded, both voice and screen
will automatically be captured. In essence, the
Scheduler would "inherit" the media type settings
assigned to each agent. Of course, an option to "override"
the agent's default media recording settings within
the Scheduler should also be available.
CONCLUSION
We asked Lior Arussy to summarize how their product
helps their customers. Arussy replied, "Well, most
importantly, the NICE system helps customers capture,
evaluate, analyze and improve the way they communicate
with their customers. This is the key toward building
lasting customer loyalty -- the greatest competitive
advantage of any successful organization."
We inquired about the efficiencies gained by using
the system and the return on investment. Lior
responded, "Depending on an organization's current
agent assessment practices, which often include live
service observations and paper evaluation forms,
studies have shown that implementing the NICE solution
can be cost-justified in as little as nine months. The
return on investment includes reduced monitoring
costs, increased agent efficiency, first contact
resolution, targeted training, better agent retention,
and more. There are other efficiencies gained through
the ability to identify and target only those
interactions you want to record, and the numerous
search parameters the system provides to locate
recorded calls."
There are four key areas any potential buyer of a
monitoring and recording system should look for:
- The product needs to allow for total recording
of all calls, selective calls (random, percentage,
scheduled), recording on demand, as well as
real-time monitoring of active calls.
- The product should not only record the voice
conversation, but also the agent's screen to "truly"
capture the customer and agent experience.
- The product needs to support "integration" into
leading third-party call center applications, such
as workforce management, evaluation/reporting
modules, system health monitoring utilities, and
e-mail routing.
- The product should be simple enough that call
center managers can easily retrieve call
recordings, perform evaluations, and run
meaningful reports.
TMC Labs is pleased to say that NICE Systems
fulfilled our four criteria with flying colors. NICE
Systems has designed one of the most, if not the most,
comprehensive call recording and monitoring system on
the market today. TMC Labs was very impressed with
NICE Systems' extensive list of supported third-party
applications, fantastic reporting, and its very
easy-to-use query and playback system. TMC Labs
recommends NICE Systems' product without reservation.
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