The migration of a call centre to a contact centre Bruce G. Lewis, Ric D. Herbert, William J. Chivers
Abstract— The Police Assistance Line is a front-end business process that drives economies and efficiencies through the NSW Police Force by releasing operational police to the front line. It is also one of the NSW State Government’s most technically advanced call centres. This paper develops a model for the PAL facility to move from being an inbound people-centric telephone call centre to an interactive multimedia contact centre where customers have the choice of communication channel. It also identifies some significant challenges that must be overcome to realise the goal. Index Terms—Call centre, contact centre, CRM, CTI, Internet.
I. I NTRODUCTION The New South Wales (NSW) Police Assistance Line (PAL) is a 24-hour inbound telephone call centre available to police and the community for the reporting of non-urgent crime and incidents. It operates statewide throughout NSW all day every day. The PAL facility is a niche facility in the call centre industry. It is used to report crime and provide an intelligence source for the Police Service. In essence, it does not want repeat customers. PAL currently takes about 60% of the calls to the NSW Police Force. The NSW Police is moving to an integrated computer-based technology platform and it is planned that PAL will be a vanguard for change. This together with the need to explore opportunities to improve the access for reporting minor crime, accommodate further police related business and implement other revenue generating business streams are the drivers to develop an interactive multi-media model for PAL. Throughout this paper it will be referred to as iPAL. The current system boundary is easily defined and its borders are well protected. In moving to the new paradigm, issues regarding security and transaction integrity arise. II. E XPANDING PAL’ S BUSINESS PAL currently takes about 60% of the non-emergency police calls most being in the greater metropolitan area of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. It also undertakes call centre work for selected NSW government agencies having police-related business. In the future, it is likely that PAL will increase its core workload through targeted marketing across NSW, take on B. Lewis: NSW Police Assistance Line and the Faculty of Science and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, Tuggerah, NSW 2259, email:
[email protected] R. Herbert: Faculty of Science and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, Ourimbah, NSW 2252, e-mail:
[email protected] W. Chivers: Faculty of Science and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, Ourimbah, NSW 2252, e-mail:
[email protected] The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors. ISBN 1-86467-114-9
additional NSW police work and participate in the NSW Government’s call centre rationalisation strategy. To meet these expectations, PAL will need to reengineer its business processes by rethinking these and undertaking radical design to create new ways of working (Hammer and Champy, 1994, 32, 90) without a significant increase in its human and technical resources. Although PAL is not a competitive business in the marketplace, it competes with itself to improve its market penetration, strategic positioning and operational effectiveness as well as the overall process value chain. Hammer and Champy (1994, 83) state that modern information technology is an “essential enabler” in the reengineering process with the Internet being “the latest stage in the ongoing evolution of information technology.” Porter (2001, 64-71) states that “The Internet is the most powerful tool available today for enhancing operational effectiveness” and improving strategic positioning. With this in mind, the logical progression for PAL is to extend its business to the Internet. Introducing the Internet will influence PAL’s business through its value chain. This is the framework for identifying and analysing the activities through which a service is created and delivered to the customer. It is also used to determine how company costs are affected and how value is delivered to the customer Porter (2001, 76, 74). The special advantage of the Internet is its ability to link one activity with others and make real-time data created in one activity widely available (Porter, 2001, 74). This will allow information collected by iPAL to be accessible to police in the field via the NSW Police fixed and mobile data networks. III. T HE CURRENT MODEL The Police Assistance Line is a virtual call centre that operates across NSW from two geographically differentiated sites at Tuggerah on the Central Coast and Lithgow in the Blue Mountains. This is accomplished by computer-telephony integration (CTI) technology. The Tuggerah site is the larger of the two and takes calls from the Greater Metropolitan area of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. This represents about 75% of the call volume. The Lithgow site takes the remaining 25% of the calls from the rest of the State. PAL is not a replacement for the Triple-0 emergency number and only takes calls related to minor crime and damage. It records the crime and incident reports for malicious damage, stealing, break, enter and steal, stolen vehicles or vessels, lost property and minor traffic accidents. It also provides general information to the public. The criteria for taking a call are that the crime is not in progress, the victims are not traumatised and the victim agrees to the report being taken over the telephone. The reporting of incidents by the public is currently limited to the telephone. The public call a single telephone number, 131-
444, from anywhere in NSW. PAL averages 50,000 calls each month using a mix of full-time and part-time Customer Service Representatives (CSR). Of these calls, about 70% are entered into the Community Operational Policing System (COPS) database which is accessed by operational police throughout the State. Some Government Agencies FAX their details to be entered into the database and one has established a Web site to which PAL CSRs visit and print off the information for manual entry into COPS. Both sites have established and proven modern technical systems to take calls, route calls to CSRs and record customer information in either the local Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database or in the remote centralised COPS database. At each site the CTI system monitors the incoming calls and routes them to the longest waiting available agents with the appropriate skill set. If there are no agents available at one of the sites, the CTI will attempt to find a CSR at the other site. If no agents are available at either site, the customer is given the option of waiting in the call queue or leaving a voice mail message. A. Current business process model The current PAL system is limited to telephone and some facsimile access for its customers. The workflow process for facsimile is manual and people dependent. The PAL system is a mix of the mainframe, client-server and personal computer system models. Primary data is stored in the COPS database that is housed remotely on the NSW Police central mainframe. This database is directly accessible to the CSRs at PAL via dedicated servers. PAL has its own Intranet which provides a knowledgebase for the CSRs when answering customers’ questions. All desktops at PAL use PCs and have tailored access to a file server for PAL-related information and the storing of business files. The CRM works under a thin client-server arrangement. This is essential for the remote Lithgow site that has a narrow bandwidth link back to the main server at Tuggerah. At times, PAL and other users throughout NSW are subjected to outages of either the mainframe, the data network or the COPS database when faults occur or maintenance and upgrades are undertaken. Under these circumstances, it is necessary to manually record customer information and key it into the COPS database at a later time, resulting in unnecessary process costs. Consequently, there is a need to store the information locally and use a middleware process to automatically and transparently move the data to the mainframe. B. Technical systems The existing PAL subsystems comprise the Lucent PABX (www.lucent.com), Genesys (www.genesyslab.com) CTI, First Contact IVR (www.vecommerce.com.au), voice mail, Nice digital voice loggers (www.hannamax.com.au), Vantive CRM (www.peoplesoft.com), BusinessObjects (www.businessobjects.com) reporting application, the Police Service data network, the COPS database and the PAL data network. The system configuration is shown in Figure 1.
Tuggerah connects to the Telstra 1) Telephony: (www.telstra.com) network via four 30-channel ISDN links and Lithgow connects via two 30-channel ISDN links. The Lucent ACD undertakes the call routing to the CSRs on instruction from the CTI. 2) Computer Telephony Integration: The Genesys CTI is the heart of the PAL business process. It is responsible for the tracking and recording of all calls that enter the business queue. The CTI holds the CSR skill sets which allows skill-based routing of calls according to the local business rules and the CSR skill level. 3) Customer Relationship Management: A CRM facility was established to enable the integration of other business streams to support the notion of self-funding. Currently, the CRM and the mainframe application work in parallel. The CRM is used as a knowledge base for the resolution of general enquiries, it records statistics of customer calls and it is used as a repository for COPS data when COPS is not available. For this latter process, the data being re-keyed into COPS when it is available at a later time. 4) The PAL data network: PAL is part of the single NSW Police data domain and does not have its own dedicated domain. The PAL data network is a distributed multi-VLAN network with limited disaster recovery. Both Tuggerah and Lithgow connect to the NSW Police data network via Cisco routers. Both Tuggerah and Lithgow connect at 100 MB. There are 100 MB backup routers at Tuggerah and Lithgow. Tuggerah automatically switches to the backup router when the primary fails. Security routers are used at each site to ensure security. At Tuggerah the router connects to switches where three VLANS are provided. These consist of a number of hubs that connect directly to the PCs throughout the centre. At Lithgow there is a single LAN. Cabling throughout the centres is Category 5 and capable of providing 100 MBps to the CSR PCs 5) Current systems limitations: There are a number of limitations that will need to be overcome to implement the new model. The CRM does not store COPS data for operational use. It is used for the integration of other business streams, as a knowledge base or as a temporary store when the COPS database is unavailable. In the latter case, the data is printed out and rekeyed into the COPS database. There is no direct relationship between the COPS database and the CRM and there is only a tenuous relationship between the CRM database and the Genesys CTI. It is planned that the CRM will be the front-end application with automatic transfer of the data to COPS as a transparent user process. The bandwidth to the desktops is limited by the existing VLAN topology and there is no Internet connection from the CSR, or any other PCs. Customers are unable to send image information that may assist in investigations. IV. T HE CONTACT CENTRE The need for iPAL has been identified in the PAL business plan. Moving to an Internet technology base will provide a standardised infrastructure at a much lower cost than private networks, reduce the importance of location and widen the regional market (Porter, 2001, 74, 66). However, the Internet only
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Internet Fig. 1. The existing configuration
changes the front-end of the business process. Internet applications are not stand-alone technologies and must be integrated in to the business’ overall value chain (Porter, 2001, 66). Using iPAL, customers will have the choice of submitting event information by voice to a CSR or over the Internet via a form, the latter providing customers with easier access (Porter, 2001, 66). Due to the structured way in which PALrelated information is required, email might not be used for reporting minor crime or accidents. However, it may be suitable for general information enquiries. “Improvements in streaming video and greater availability of low-cost bandwidth ... will make it easier for customer service representatives ... to speak directly to customers through their computers” (Porter, 2001, 70). Voice only contact will continue where customers will enter a queue to be answered by the longest waiting CSR with the relevant skill set. If no CSR available, the customer will be given the option of staying in the queue or leaving a voice mail message whence a CSR will call back at a later time to take the details. For Internet transactions, customers will access the PAL site and download a form for completion. When complete, the customer will submit it to the server for checking to ensure that all necessary information is included. If not, a message will be sent back to the customer requesting the information. The form will contain buttons that allow the customer to communicate with a CSR for assistance through a voice chat or text chat facility. The types of customer processes that will be required include entering a new event, adding more information to an existing event and printing an event. These facilities will be available to the customer at any time during the transaction. CSRs will be multi-skilled with respect to all types of business streams and communications technologies. Where a customer requests a text or voice chat, that customer will be placed into the main call queue with all other customers. The CSR will take the call and also have access to the customer’s form and any attached data. Together they will be able to complete the form. At any stage it will be possible for the customer to return to the form alone and release the CSR for other calls. On the other hand, the customer may hand the call
to the CSR for completion on their behalf. Customers may wish to send digital images or documents to PAL to support stolen goods or malicious damage reports. This will have storage facility implications for both PAL and the COPS database and a strategy will need to be developed to store, link and transport such attachments with the COPS database record. Once a transaction is completed and correct, it will be conveyed by a separate middleware application to the remote COPS database. Here, an event number will be generated and passed to the customer. At a later time, voice recognition may be considered to assist disabled customers or customers with literacy or language impediments. As the voice recognition facilities develop, automatic interpretation may evolve for non-English speaking background people. Typically, an iPAL transaction may follow this process • Customer accesses web site and downloads a form. • The form is completed on the customer’s PC. • Local web form intelligence on the customer’s PC checks that the information is correct and complete. • When all necessary information has been entered and accepted, the Customer submits the form. • The web servers/business application layer at PAL checks that all is correct. – If incorrect the form is returned for correction. – If correct the data is entered into the CRM and then COPS. • An event number is sent to the customer. A. Implementing the contact centre Implementation will leverage off the existing systems and infrastructure. Both the Genesys CTI and Vantive CRM support web-based multi-media web-based transactions. iPAL will support a variety of Internet-based media channels with a single management infrastructure. In 2001, Genesys announced a strategic alliance with PeopleSoft, suppliers of the Vantive CRM, to provide a tight integration between the CTI and CRM products. A comprehensive so-
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Based on a drawing provided by PeopleSoft titled ”Layout of a call centre”, 2001
Fig. 2. The iPAL concept
lution will manages customer interactions via voice, email and the Web communication channels. Intelligent customer routing will be based on business rules and customer profiles. The CTI’s universal routing will handle multimedia interactions through a single, integrated queue which will handle routing requests for voice calls, emails, web interactions and other media types simultaneously. Calls will be delivered to the CSRs by a single queue and each individual interaction type and origin will be evaluated to ensure it receives the correct priority and treatment according to the organisation’s business rules. The Genesys Internet Suite which includes the following components will plug into the existing CTI to provide to a complete multi-media contact centre. . . • Email which has facilities such as auto-responses, context analysis and response libraries. • Web call-backs which can be scheduled or immediate and consists of a button that goes onto a Web page. • A chat button to access a chat room with a CSR • Co-browse which enables the customer and CSR to navigate the same Web page. • Although voice over IP (VOIP) is a consideration, bandwidth limitations will determine its viability. The Genesys solution supports email that can automatically respond and/or suggest responses to incoming emails based on specified business rules, chat that provides real-time text communication through a Web browser, voice call back over the public telephone system in response to a request from the Web site, call through ( or voice over IP) that allows Web users to speak to the CSRs from their computer using standard Internet phone software, and Web collaboration where the CSR and customer Web browsers are automatically synchronised. The Internet is accelerating cross-activity integration and CRM is being used to link multiple activities together (Porter, 2001, 74). The CRM is a comprehensive database that organises all of the customer information and displays it in logical fashion to the CSRs to manage the customer interactions in concert with the business processes. The CRM can be used to develop the business process, busi-
ness logic and the customer Web pages. The ability to communicate with the call centre will be through the CTI by placing triggers or buttons on the Web forms via the CRM to facilitate Web callbacks, Web chats and co-browse. Irrespective of the incoming customer call channel, all interactions will be logged in the CRM. The CRM has three key areas being Collaborative CRM, Operation CRM and Analytical CRM. The Collaborative component of the CRM is undertaken by the Genesys CTI universal queue which handles the inbound and outbound transactions via a number of channels. There is also an operational component that captures and stores the customer information . Figure 2 shows the iPAL concept diagrammatically. The Web server is not dependent on either the CTI or CRM and, depending on the size of the hardware, more than one Web server may be necessary to balance the transaction load. From the CRM aspect, multiple Web servers will not prevent the customer from reaching the CRM business logic resident on application server. The diagram shows that there is now a firm business process link between the CTI and the CRM applications. The backend integration process will replace the mainframe server shown in Figure 1. It is yet to be developed and is essential to implement iPAL. Security is a major issue for the concept and will be discussed later in the paper. Nevertheless, Figure 2 shows a firewall as a first bastion. Prior to implementation, it is planned that iPAL will be modelled and tested to determine its feasibility and to highlight areas requiring attention. Here it may be possible to construct and agent based model with objects for the main sub-systems. As a sideline, the same model may include a component for an object model database as a replacement for COPS database. Commissioning of iPAL will be undertaken in defined steps to ensure security and transaction integrity. The first step will be to establish an extranet for one of the Government Agencies that currently reports by FAX. All business and contact processes will be tested and, if necessary, processes will be rebuilt. Once successful, other Government Agencies will be added to the extranet leading to the public at large. The project is planned to be staged over a three-year period in
which a systems approach will be undertaken. The early part of the project will comprise determining the functional, physical and operational requirements and translating these to a set of system specifications. B. Implementation issues There are a number of issues that need to be addressed prior to implementing the contact centre implementation. 1) Security: With the current arrangement, there is no direct contact between the COPS database and the customers. It is the CSR who provides the firewall, being the only person with access to both. Where Internet access is required, the CSR accesses a separate PC. This is shown diagrammatically in Figure 1. The contact centre necessitates the customers having access to the police data system for data entry and receipt of an event number. Without tight security measures, iPAL could represent a high level of risk to the COPS database and it will be necessary to implement all necessary hardware and software components to ensure its integrity. The use of firewalls Kreonke (2000, 277) and/or security routers coupled with security applications will need to be developed and rigorously tested prior to implementation. Glister et al. (2000, pp348-249) highlight security as an issue. To provide the security needed, “the system is typical set up with segregated services with the e-commerce, transaction and database servers located behind firewall”. This concept is shown in Figure 2. Kreonke (2000, 326) states that where an application server is used, it is best to place the security process on the Web server. This will prevent sensitive security data from being sent over the Internet. How security is to be realised will require further research and a detailed testing regime. 2) Transaction integrity: When a customer completes a transaction successfully, they will receive a unique event number to be used for future reference. This is the product provided in exchange for the information given. However, at any time during the lifecycle of a transaction, a failure may occur that prevents the transaction from being completed. Figure 3 shows the potential points of failure during the transaction process. Areas that could experience a failure to complete the transaction include a dropout of the telephone or data lines that connect the various system components, mainframe failure, ISP failure or police system failure. Furthermore, a failure in the common system components could affect many customers. A process needs to be developed that allows a customer or CSR to re-establish a customer connection and complete the transaction without starting over. Here, a process could be initiated at the start of the transaction where iPAL provides the customer with a unique number. Then if the transaction fails, and prevents the customer from receiving a COPS event number, the customer can call at a later time, quote the number and receive the COPS number. This will necessitate mapping the iPAL number in the relevant COPS record. In operation, concurrent access by a number of entities may be required and processes must be implemented to ensure that those who do not have access to make changes are aware that another party has access to the record.
Kreonke (2000, 308) states that it is important to ensure that “one user’s work does not inappropriately influence another user’s work” and that transactions must be atomic such that either all actions within a transaction are performed or none are performed. 3) Customer document and image data: A customer may have photographic or document information in the form images that may assist the police intelligence in situations such as stolen goods, minor traffic accidents or malicious damage that need to be linked to the report. The COPS database needs to either store the image information or store a link to the image. Research could be undertaken in this area to determine if an object based database model would better suit the multi-tier iPAL model. 4) Thin client CSR terminals: CSRs currently use PCs that result in a high total cost of ownership McKeowan (2001, 47). Resident on these PCs is a variety of applications that support the PAL business processes including a Genesys Softphone, the corporate memo and email system, the Vantive CRM client and up to four mainframe sessions. The Genesys Softphone displays the agent status, the status for each of the incoming queues, a dial pad and a display of the calling number if enabled by the customer. It also enables voice recording on demand for malicious and threatening calls and a call for the operational supervisor assistance. CSRs often call for assistance from the technical staff when applications freeze, the PC locks or the mainframe sessions lock up. To minimise the level of technical support, investigation will be undertaken to see how best that a thin client network computer can be developed for the CSRs. 5) Telecommunications Network Redundancy and Bandwidth: At each PAL site, there is only single telecommunications feed from the local exchange. To improve the availability and reliability of PAL, it is necessary to investigate the provision of an alternate route for each site and the method chosen will be dependent upon the ease of access. Each site is now fed by single fibre optic cable and the provision of a second path may prove difficult. Each site has the ability to be fed by a radio link that may result in a cost effective solution. It will be necessary to look at the existing LAN capacities to determine their ability to support multimedia and Internet applications at all workstations. 6) Customer transactions: The possibility of duplicate entries for the same event needs to be prevented. This may occur where more than one person reports the same event in isolation from another person. This may also occur through multiple channels. Where this occurs, a mechanism for linking like events will be required. Handling transactions that are incomplete and require the customer to return at a later time is another important area. Here, a customer using the Web may wish to return at a later time to add or change details. In such cases, the COPS event may be in the process of being actioned by the police local area command. Processes will need to be developed to ensure that the changes are audited, traceable and flagged to the police. V. C ONCLUSION The concept of migrating the Police Assistance Line from a call centre to a multi-media contact centre has been identified
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Fig. 3. Transaction Integrity Model
in the PAL business plan and is feasible using the existing primary telecommunications and computer systems as a technology base. Using the Internet as an essential enabler (Hammer and Champy, 1994, 83) will improve PAL’s strategic position and allow improved accounting and budgeting by the reduction of variable costs and tilting the cost structures toward fixed costs (Porter, 2001, 64). Before this can be accomplished, issues surrounding the automatic integration of the CRM with the centralised COPS database, security of the police systems, the storage of multimedia information and transaction integrity need to be addressed. To improve maintainability from a user perspective, the use of thin client network PCs will need to be investigated and to improve telecommunications redundancy, alternate routes and technologies will also need to be investigated. PAL provides substantial productivity gains for the Police Service by taking reports from the public that sworn police would, in the past, have taken directly. These police are now released for front-line duty. With the limited number of people available to take calls at PAL, the introduction of an interactive multimedia contact centre will allow a greater number of calls to be taken with little increase the number of Customer Service Representatives. It will also allow the introduction of other business streams. Whether the customer base embraces the technical reporting streams will depend on their comfort with using the technology, their awareness of the technology, the ease of use of the technology, marketing and education the community. R EFERENCES Glister, R., J. Bienvenu and K. Ulstad (2000). Cisco Networking for Dummies. IDG. CA USA. Hammer, M. and J. Champy (1994). Reengineering the Corportaion: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. Allen & Unwin. Australia. Kreonke, D.M. (2000). Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design & Implementation. Prentice Hall. USA. McKeowan, P.G (2001). Information Technology and the Networked Economy. Harcourt. USA. Porter, M.E. (2001). Staretgy and the Internet. Harvard Business Review. U.S.A.
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