Transforming the face of customer care in utilities
Customer Care Framework (CCF) enables dramatic improvements in customer care efficiency by delivering better information faster to customer service representatives, reducing operating costs, and delivering an improved, consistent customer experience. In contrast to other approaches, CCF delivers the fastest time to solution, makes information more accessible, is more cost-effective, and is easier to implement; it improves the face of the customer care experience. Whether your utility operates in a regulated environment or in competitive markets, CCF is your answer for empowering your people to deliver increased cost efficiencies, increasing customer service quality and improving financial performance.
Microsoft has created Customer Care Framework (CCF), a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and software building block that accelerates a utility's ability to develop highly efficient and versatile customer service applications platform with multichannel integration capabilities through Web services. CCF helps ensure that a utility's customer care infrastructure will be agile and flexible. Agents and customers gain access service information in highly effective ways, no matter where and how that information is maintained.
The design and organization of CCF demonstrates best practices and methodologies for building adaptable and scalable applications for performance-critical enterprise functions. CCF extensively uses the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server software — blending smart client and SOA methods to create a technology infrastructure that readily accommodates continuous change and growth. CCF was designed to:
| • | Significantly reduce the time for a customer service representative (CSR) to execute customer service or support requests — reduce call handling times. |
| • | Allows for modernization of existing customer information systems without replacement. |
| • | Improve agents' ability to be effective and provide a satisfying customer experience. |
| • | Allow continuous reconfiguration and modification to accommodate the ongoing introduction of new products and service plans without disrupting operations and increasing developmental overhead. |
| • | Be easily deployable and maintainable with a low total cost of ownership (TCO) |
| • | Reduce the time needed for CSR's to be train and become productive |
| • | Scale transparently and cost-effectively. |
| • | Support multichannel delivery of customer service functions. |
| • | Take advantage of existing investments in contact center and LOB applications, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) infrastructures. |
Graphic: Customer Care Framework overview
Quick Delivery of the Right Information
CCF automates the delivery of customer information to a Utility CSR prior to and during a call session – the key to improving productivity and customer satisfaction. By immediately acknowledging the customer's identity and conveying information about the customer's service and account, the agent is empowered to control the call session and make the customer's interaction a highly gratifying experience. Being able to access the right information in timely manner gives the agent the opportunity to promote and market additional services. To facilitate an optimal interaction between the customer and agent, CCF provides the following capabilities.
When a CSR receives a call, CCF passes information obtained from the customer's initial interaction with an interactive voice response (IVR) system or voice portal to the CCF client module, Agent Desktop. The Agent Desktop starts the relevant supporting applications by using the customer information as the parameters for the application methods. In turn, these applications access information from OSS/BSS LOB systems that have been exposed as Web services. In addition, the workflow steps to execute a particular customer service function are presented to the agent. All of this takes place automatically, without the intervention of the CSR. Furthermore, it takes place in a fraction of the time it would take for the agent to collect the customer's identifying information, start the support applications, and type the relevant information.
Having this context information available to any application running on the Agent Desktop saves the CSR and customer a significant amount of time and effort in conducting the business of the call by eliminating the need to manually launch information and retype information. Context sharing also facilitates the orchestration of business process workflow, involving multiple applications, such as ordering new services. Context sharing is accomplished by the ability of CCF to share information among multiple applications. In addition, the call state and context information persist in the CCF database that resides in the middle tier. Therefore, the call, in addition to the state of the applications supporting the call, can be transferred to another agent or resumed at a later time.
CCF makes these efficiencies possible by delivering smart client technology to the desktop and a robust application integration engine (Microsoft BizTalk Server with support from Microsoft SQL Server TM) in the middle tier, both of which make extensive use of XML to maximize process automation.
Next Steps
| • | See how CCF can benefit utilities by viewing this demo |
| • | For more information on how CCF can help your utility achieve cost efficiencies, increase customer service quality and improve financial performance go to http://www.microsoft.com/ccf |
