Managing info-mania

Communications News, Feb, 1998 by Joe Staples

Products and technologies abound to help a company improve employee productivity and customer service -- but some of them produce the opposite result.

Voice mail, e-mail, and faxes can inundate workers with messages. Because each type of message has to be handled differently, workers spend more time managing messages and less time acting on and using the information received:

* Voice messages are typically managed from the telephone using a set of touch-tone commands.

* E-mail messages are managed from the computer, using yet another set of commands.

* Fax messages, in their most primitive sense, actually require the sender and recipient to leave the desk and wait by the fax machine.

* Companies with more sophisticated fax technology, such as LAN-based fax servers, must manage those faxes from yet another client interface with a different set of commands.

One solution is unified messaging. It provides universal access and control of all message types -- voice mail, fax, and electronic mail. Users can efficiently manage all three message types from a single device -- the telephone or the personal computer. A centralized message store has administration functions for all messaging applications.

Information access allows callers to obtain specific information -- often customized -- automatically from the telephone or personal computer. Using interactive voice response (IVR), callers enter a unique identifier (an account number or order number) and access personal information such as an account balance, order status, or any unique information stored on a host database. IVR provides a higher level of customer service by allowing customers to perform routine transactions regardless of whether the company is open or an agent is available.

Two other common information access applications are fax on demand and audio-text. These technologies enable callers to obtain information anytime -- either by fax or an audio message -- from the telephone. Companies with an Internet presence use this to provide information to their customers 24 hours a day.

Call management and call center productivity applications solve some customer service problems by decreasing the time one is kept on hold; decreasing the duration of the call; and increasing agent productivity. Call management applications obtain the "who" and "why" of the caller and then pass the information to the most qualified person to take the call. The caller's information is passed to the agent at the same time the automatic call distribution (ACD) system passes the live call.

Provided with information about callers, agents are able to manage better their own time. They can decide if an incoming call is more important than the work they are doing. Telephone tag and unnecessary interruptions are eliminated, increasing employee productivity.

Industry analysts predict that the computer telephony industry revenues will reach $20 billion by 1999. Today's business market is segmented into the small-office, home-office (SOHO) market (comprised of companies employing from one to 20 people); small to medium-size companies employing from 20 to 1,000 employees), and the large, Fortune 500 companies (typically employing more than 1,000 people).

Companies in the SOHO market typically have no messaging or automated call management system in place and have limited or no funds for these types of systems. Yet these companies need to improve productivity and provide a larger-than-life image to the outside world. An option is to seek out entry-level voice processing systems -- often voice messaging services from a local service bureau -- which provide basic voice messaging and automated call routing capabilities at the most affordable price.

On the other end of the market spectrum are Fortune 500 companies. They were the first to deploy the proprietary voice mail systems of the early 1980s. For this market segment, the most important factors are size and scalability -- price is a secondary concern. Proprietary voice messaging systems remain heavily entrenched in this market.

The limited budgets of the small companies -- and the high level of market saturation and slow growth rate of the large companies -- limit the opportunities for computer telephony solutions in these markets.

The greatest opportunity for mainstream deployment of these solutions seems to be in the small to mid-size companies, the biggest and fastest-growing segment of the market. Most have voice messaging systems of some type -- either entry-level voice processing or proprietary systems. They are now looking to update their technology multi-application, standards-based solutions.