My two least favorite words... particularly when I call a company to try and get help with some kind of customer service issue:
Correcting my mobile phone bill... trying to get a hold of someone at an airline to tell me if I can use my miles for a particular route... dealing with my insurance agency... (Look, can I just talk to the Gecko, please? He seems to know what he's talking about in those Geico commercials!)
As a part of IBM's significant investment in the business analytics and optimization arena, the company is looking to address the problem of making sure callers can find the best resources for answering their questions.
IBM collaborated with specialty insurance provider Assurant Solutions to develop the Real-Time Analytics Matching Platform (RAMP).
RAMP is helping Assurant Solutions call centers to increase customer retention and sales yields by combining data about the individual customer with each contact center agent's specific calls, expertise, and past performance, to optimize the routing of calls.
IBM GBS consultants designed a "matching-engine" which leverages this combination of customer insight, agent profiles, and real-time analytics to provide "individual-level" decisioning and assignment of calls not available in most contact center applications.
This is in juxtaposition with most current contact centers' current approach, a skills-based system which only takes into consideration the agent's product focus and availability.
Assurant's implementation of RAMP has seen retention revenue grow by 37 percent and sales revenue grow by 29 percent.
RAMP is activated the moment a customer contacts the call center. Within seconds the platform uses data generated from previous call center interactions to identify acceptable wait times for individual customers.
RAMP then factors in agent performance and qualifications to decide which agent would serve that customer best. At the same time, RAMP determines when the optimal agent will become available using prediction algorithms based on the length of the current call and historical call handle times.
The analytics-based decision engine then assigns the caller to the optimal agent and routes the call in real-time to that agent. The engine tracks each call assignment and makes necessary adjustments if an agent's call ends before or after its predicted time.
The video below, though kind of cheesy, does a good job of explaining RAMP's capabilities.
RAMP is available today through IBM Global Business Services' Business Analytics and Optimization (BAO) service line.
The Assurant Solutions companies are part of Assurant, a premier provider of specialized insurance products and related services in North American and selected international markets.
Assurant, a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AIZ. Assurant has over $25 billion in assets and $8 billion in annual revenue (www.assurant.com).
For more information on RAMP and other IBM Business Analytics and Optimization offerings visit www.ibm.com/gbs/bao.
Incredible, homesteadtraders! You should get bonus points just for persistance and donating anyway!
Yes, it seems as if the IBM system could assist the humans in this case to better serve the customer - who continually seems to get lost in this equation!
You guys want frustration? I wanted to make a donation to Salvation Army today. After having to hit a series of automation numbers, which was bad enough, I was then put on hold by the HUMAN for about 5 minutes. When the human finally came back on, I had to repeat to them some of what went through automation.
So, while their system as a whole was not too friendly (including the human element), having to repeat myself doesn't seem to be saving time or resources. Maybe this IBM solution would be of use.
lek1981, I really like your suggestion - now you are talking service!
Great new solution to a troublesome area. Todd, this is great! There is nothing worse than the myriad array of automated answering that leads nowhere, particularly to a human being.
That is great what IBM has created. I think they should market it to Verizon - which ironically has the WORST phone system of all.
Many companies asked you to do a survey after you speak with a rep, how about if I really like a rep, the phone and computer system remembers this and the next time I called if that rep is available I get to talk to the same rep.
I can totally,totally relate to the frustrations experienced when dealing with customer delays and customer reps.I really like what the RAMP speaks about and looks to achieve.I just wonder whether it will work as well in practice as the Theory looks right now.
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