IMPLEMENTATION OF CONTACT CENTRE
TO HEALTHCARE SECTOR
Ivan Baroňák, Ivana Ferenczyová
Slovak University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Ilkovičova 3, Bratislava, [email protected]), [email protected])
6th
Int. Conference on
Emerging e-learning
Technologies
and Applications
The High Tatras,
Slovakia
September 11-13, 2008
Abstract. Majority of customers think that their needs concerning running business and marketing
information in relation to a service provider can be complexly solved only by face-to-face contact at a
particular branch, in some case the supplier’s place of business. Contact Centres have recently started
to replace these places due to the overload and certain slouch. In this article the contact centre is
described and eventually implemented to the healthcare sector.
Keywords: agent, e-health, telecommunication, Contact Centre
1. INTRODUCTION
In the introductory part we will try to analyze possibilities of
Contact Centres (CC) in connection with the development of
modern society. In the next step we will focus on
explanation of basic functionalities of individual CC
components. Considering that health service is quite
discussed topic, our attention will be devoted to CC
implementation for providing of information services in
healthcare sector. The topic we are all interested in and
which touches all of us. Without exception! We all want to
rely fully on our healthcare institutions and in case of need
to be in so-called “good hands”. Not only finance is a
current problem, but also communication among a patient,
doctor and other healthcare components.
Fig. 1. Market division by companies owning large Contact
Centres
2. COMPLEX VIEW UPON CONTACT CENTRE
Smaller CC belong to telemarketing companies or middlesized companies from various sectors. They employ from 5
to 50 operators.
Origin and function of Contact Centre
First CC were created 25 or 30 years ago as reservation
centres, either in the field of airlines, or travel agencies.
Next we speak about companies providing catalogue sale.
Contact Centre – we speak about application of technologies
which effectively manage operations during the processing
of incoming and outcoming communication, telephone calls,
e-mails, contributions via internet pages and other. CC
serves as a mediator between a customer and a service
provider, but it is also an important tool enabling the service
provider to observe and evaluate gained data for a future –
consequent development of its business, marketing
activities. Large CC employing from 101 to 500 or more
operators are owned by prominent companies which focus
mainly on customer service in the field of marketing and
sale (26%), telecommunications (22%), financial
engineering (23%) and other sectors.
Prognosis and future of Contact Centres
As far as the supply of new systems is concerned, prognosis
for the European market is promising and without
exaggeration we can say that this telecommunication sector
will be getting bigger room for realization. Even today we
can see growing tendency of businessmen to integrate CC
with e-mail box and with the possibility to access business
databases. Standard telephone contact is no longer sufficient
for a company’s success. A few general facts from market
analyses: According to analysis by Benchmark Research up
to 92% of customers, in case they have good experience
with first contact, or (if you like) CC of the particular
company, automatically classify the company into category
of companies with a good image. On the other hand, up to
62%, in case of negative experience with CC, seriously
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consider cancelling contacts with the company. The analysis
results prove the necessity of implementation of good CC.
Expenses to get a new customer are 5x higher than to keep
the existing one.
Automatic Call Distribution
Automatic call distribution – ACD represents automatic
classification of CC calls. Incoming calls are being
classified according to the calling number, duration, and
queue length while waiting for the connection with an
operator and the whole spectre of other criteria and are
subsequently routed to particular workstation of an operator.
With the help of ACD the calls can be routed to the next
available or for the longest time idle agent.
The result is an equal distribution of work load on all
members of a particular group. The base of ACD is Call
Handling. ACD as an advantage especially for a great
number of incoming calls, because using the whole spectre
of functions (vector routing, front creating, productivity
control of service workers´ work…) enable effective
processing of informing calls including statistic functions
for the project management. It is important to regard the fact
that callers have various requirements and successful agents
have to have certain knowledge, experience and skills,
however, not all operators have the same. This is what we
have to bear in mind when handling the calls.
Fig. 2. Expenses to get a new customer and to keep the
existing one
ACD
One customer that is not satisfied informs 7 other customers
– each contact is a “moment of truth”, it has to have a high
standard.
Development of Contact Centres from the beginning to
present
In initial phases of CC implementation in companies the
base of their technical solution was so-called CTI
(Computer Telephony Integration), as it were computer
telephony and its integration into modern digital telephone
exchanges, next ACD service (Automatic Call Distribution),
which enables central automatic call distribution and last but
not least IVR service (Interactive Voice Response), which
completes the above mentioned services with automatic
classification of voice messages, which with particular calls
or waiting on the line replace the operator’s notification.
Recently other technologies are applied to CC, such as ASR
(Automatic Speech Recognition), or a voice dialling, or a
system of unified messaging. Recently, under the influence
of integration of voice services into data networks (VoIP)
and also under the influence of development of mobile
telephone networks, utilization of other services came into
existence, such as utilization of contacts with customers,
with the help of web pages, text messages, picture messages,
e-mails and others. All these services are gradually included
into CC and make them multimedia CC.
CALL
HANDLING
AA
IVR
AGENT
CALLING
LINKS
QUERY
Fig. 3. Call Handling
Call Handling is divided into: Call Prompting – call
handling according to caller’s orders and Call Vectoring –
vector routing of incoming calls. The aim of ACD is: to
minimize the queuing time, to regard the priority of a
particular call – which number is being called, who is
calling, for how many times, to find optimal worker from
point of view of language, knowledge and competence, to
distribute the load on serving workers equally, to recognize
the overload and to route the calls alternatively to another
group, external worker, or automat.
The following call aspects are used when handling a call:
the required service – DNIS (Dialled Number Identification
Service) or when using only one calling number accessing
IVR the caller chooses (DTMF, ASR) required service from
the offered menu and the second aspect identification of the
caller via CLI (Calling Line Identity) – offered by operator
(Slovak Telekom) as one of services ISDN, PIN (Personal
Identification Number), ID (Identity) – the caller identifies
himself/herself by entering ID and/or PIN by verified IVR,
AA (Automated Attendant), by selecting from the menu.
3. IDENTIFICATION OF FUNCTIONAL
COMPONENTS IN CONTACT CENTRE
CC as a whole represents a set of technical means in form of
infocommunication structure and place of work of agent/s,
or supervisor.
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IVR – Interactive Voice response
Modern CC include IVR (interactive voice response)
service, or (if you like) automatic voice system enabling
sending, or receiving certain information from customer
without cooperation from living operator. In case of
“queuing” of callers, IVR is able to replay actual news to
customers they might be interested in, or it is able to answer
frequently asked questions. Next option for a caller is to
leave a voice message, text message, e-mail notification or
request for Call back. Each IVR PC server has to be
connected to PBX via analogue and/or digital lines.
Decision for a particular connection type is based on a
required capacity. A client is usually an individual PC and it
is instrumental to development and change of IVR
application, administration, acquiring of monitoring and
statistical data, in some case service interventions. Mutual
cooperation among IVR – PBX/ACD – CTI servers is made
possible by the application protocol CSTA (Computer
Supported Telecommunications Applications) – a protocol
defined exactly for a logic connection of telecommunication
systems with computer systems with a file of defined
services, of these the most important is the management of
call switching in PBX required by computer systems (IVR,
CTI) and monitoring of events and PBX sources. A very
important part of CSTA information is a call sign, which
provides information about each call for all CTI systems and
is used to transmit information between operators during
call forwarding. The call sign could for example include
whether the caller was identified, last position in IVR menu
structure, identification of the customer, etc.
particular groups of operators, in some case individual
operators? Are all the operators active? Do they participate
on the traffic load correctly? Is it necessary to add more
operators? How does the traffic in CC change during the
day, week, month, year?
Universal
Workflow
Workforce
Workforce
Managemant
Enterprice
Outbound
Contact
Internet
Contact
Network
Routing
Enterprise
Routing
CTI – Computer Telephony Integration
Integration of computer and telephone systems CTI was
created on the basis of requirements of companies to
decrease costs, increase incomes and need for
transformation of management of CC interconnection and
companies. Screen pop, workforce management, outbound
call, data based routing, inbound/outbound mixing and
connection to Internet are functions of CTI applications
required at CC designing. On the basis of caller
identification to information line, the operator is able to see
the necessary information on his screen even during the
caller’s introduction (name, place of residence, archive of
queries). No longer does the caller have to introduce himself
several times, spell his identification data, describe the
problem, etc. when handling a call to another operator.
FRAMEWORK & REPORTING
WWW
CTI
PBX/ACD
IVR
Tag
CSTA
Emerging
Media
MIDDLEWARE
Fig. 5. Synchronization of CTI server
Quality management in order to improve service provided
by agents
By the notion of quality management we can imagine Online monitoring, calls recording and interactions – Voice
logging, solutions, which can measure the level and quality
of service by combining on-line monitoring, recording and
analysis of data. Conditions set in advance: “Total recording
– full-time recording“, Selective recording – only of that
agent and station we need to record and are set either by a
supervisor, or (if you like) a CC service manager,
“Recording on demand” – activated manually by an agent,
or (if you like) by a supervisor directly from his workstation,
„Random recording“ – of communication. All the recorded
calls are archived on HDD. The recording system is also
equipped with a tool to manage and browse (to listen to)
gained recordings. Nowadays the majority of CC inform
you about the call recording during switching to operator, as
a result of quality improvement of provided service.
Tag
CSTA
SCREEN
POP UP
Fig. 4. Interaction IVR – PBX/ACD / CTI
CMS - Call Management System
The system of control and management of calls CMS, it is
monitoring of a call processing and their handling by
operators at CC. Information in real time is displayed on the
terminal of the supervisor. On the basis of the information
from the statistic server, information about individual
agents´ actions (agent’s status, how long does an agent occur
in the status, number of waiting calls, etc.), CMS answers
following questions: How many calls are being processed by
Unified Communications (UC)
UC focus on the increase of employees´ productivity and
enlarging of spheres of cooperation in accordance with the
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decrease of maintenance cost of several communication
application and infrastructures. Employees, customers and
business partners use an endless combination of tools during
their communication, such as telephone calls, voice
messages, fax, e-mails, mobile clients or conferences. A
varied scale of communication devices and instruments
belong to it. Without this system of unified communication
these tools cannot be used effectively, because they are
overload by information. Unified messaging represents the
core of UC. It merges various message flows (telephone,
fax, e-mail, text message and others) into one virtual inbox
(mailbox), accessible from various devices. The future for
information is: the one who gets the information fastest, in
best order and most effectively, has from the economic point
of view a better chance than his rival. Our day at work
would be easier if we had all the information on one
platform. With the help of PC we make calls, receive faxes
to our e-mail box, from where we can bring them up again
via telephone, fax, e-mail, internet, or WAP application.
Among UC key factors belong: accessibility (wherever,
whenever, however, whoever with), time saving. “Your
time” is the idea of UC, where the customer chooses how
and where he will connect with his messages, and who will
he communicate with.
What should the modern solution offer?
Healthcare organizations should focus on the model “collect
the data only once and use many times”. A modern solution
should be built around new technologies meeting all
standards and requirements, such as the effectiveness,
robustness, connectivity and extremely strict data and
information security. It should use the advanced
authorization
methods,
prove/verify
authenticity,
verification and encryption and others. The solution should
provide design, planning, implementation, traffic and
solution of web virtual healthcare community. In the next
step it should support on-line gathering of medical
information from various sources and their fast transfer to
authorized recipients.
5. IMPLEMENTATION OF CONTACT CENTRE TO
HEALTHCARE SECTOR
To be able to implement CC to healthcare sector correctly it
is necessary to plan individual steps properly, in the
following areas:
Planning of CC
A company has to answer the following questions: Which
calls can be answered automatically by IVR? Which
questions will the operators have to be able to answer and
react promptly to? Which connection to network to choose,
one number or is it necessary to differentiate the access to
the service through various call prefixes? How should the
operators be organized into particular groups according to
required service?
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
ASR system is responsible for the transfer of digitalized
speech signal into its text form. Individual recognitions are
classified into categories according to following criteria:
dictionary size: the more words the recognized recording
contains, the more difficult the recognition process is and
probability of confusion of individual recognizing
components increases, one or two speakers: systems set to
recognize recordings of a one particular person reach bigger
success of recognition than systems recognizing recordings
of various speakers, further criteria are: isolated words vs.
fluent speech, domain or language restrictions, read vs.
spontaneous, bad conditions.
Defining size of CC
A company is forced to work with estimations and
expectations and the result is setting the number of agents
and number of incoming/outcoming lines. It is important to
start from the estimation of number of calls considering the
load peak, which is necessary to be processed, the next point
is for how long will the caller wait for the available operator
(10, 20 sec.?), how effective the operator will be with
handling an average caller’s request.
4. INEVITABILITY OF INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN
HEALTHCARE SECTOR
On the basis of these data the number of lines (operators)
can be set with the help of charts.
Every one of us should ask himself/herself a question: are
we aware of the fact how important the information and
telecommunication technologies are nowadays in the
process of improvement of internal and external
communication and information transfer in the sphere of
healthcare? In fact, one is not aware of the fact how many
important data there are with one patient.
The patient becomes an information carrier, which is
transmitted to various healthcare providers either verbally,
or in paper form.
There is a big need of complex information structure, which
would enable connection of various medical information
systems.
Localization
Considering the current availability, quality and costs of
telecommunication services, the availability of man-power
and their level of knowledge became the primary aspect for
the choice of locality.
Training of CC operators
First training of CC operators is the most important one,
because there is experience neither with supervisors, nor
operators.
That is the reason why personal trainings are important, as
well as familiarizing oneself with company culture,
products, work with telephones and computer applications.
CC operation is one of the most expensive parts of CC, that
is why their work has to be done on the highest level.
As a result we would get a compatible virtual environment,
which would enable the staff to get the integrated, true and
quality information in time and in the right place.
4
Implementation of CC and its testing traffic
Implementation has to be planned realistically regarding the
range of structural blocks of CC to have enough time for
mutual integration of systems. What is important is the fact
that it is not possible to omit the testing traffic with control
of all the defined functions and possible error states and
regard also the intradepartmental customer traffic at the
beginning.
CONTACT CENTRE
MANAGER
CONTACT CENTRE
6. BUILDING OF CC
SUPERVISOR
CONTACT CENTRE
The building stage has the following levels: communication
(communication channels), technological (hardware and
software equipment), organization (organization and
personal traffic security).
Functionalities
General functionality – general information given to the
agent or via information line at the given telephone number,
automatic text message sending, internet (chat, call back),
possibility of CTI supporting call handling, processing of email communication.
Client functionality – online gathering of medical data from
various sources and fast transfer to receivers, enabling a
doctor to see into historic data, making an appointment by
telephone to speed the waiting at individual doctors up,
access to planning data bases of doctors, non-stop service to
patients via non-stop CC, implementation of the system of
“electronic health-care cards”, which will simplify the
process of public administration and make the process of
information availability more effective, in case the “paper”
card gets lost.
AGENT 1
AGENT X
Fig. 6. Organizing of CC
7. CONCLUSION
Contact Centres are a “business card” of a company for the
actual, but also for the potential clients. Whenever you
contact the customer, reputation of your company is “on
line” and that should be the most important fact.
Consequently, building-up the best Contact Centre in the
healthcare sector should be its primary goal. The aim of this
article was to introduce the notion of Contact Centre as a
whole, its past, development and description of its
functional components. Last but not least we spoke about its
implementation to the healthcare sector, which we think was
successful.
Communication channels
The communication enabled by PBX and public telephone
network, namely: landline network Slovak Telecom, a.s.
represented by the bran name T-Mobile Slovensko, a.s.,
Orange Slovensko, a.s. as well as Telefónica O2 Slovakia,
s.r.o. Next we speak about the communication over internet
with the e-mail processing applications, chat and call back
and also with the help of fax processing.
Organizing
It is important to define solutions when the agent is not able,
or competent to solve the situation incurred. That is the time
when the CC manager enters and the supervisor is particular
about the agents to follow only his orders. The workstation
of the agent consists of a voice terminal with the following
functions: agent’s identification, terminal status, status
drivers. The supervisor controls the CC traffic, manages the
agents, helps them with the problems incurred, makes
changes to balance the day load, is able to monitor the
agents either by silent listening of the conversation, direct
dialling of the agent’s number without interrupting of the
conversation and without entering the conversation, or by
permanent monitoring – the supervisor is able to see agents´
statuses – logged-on, logged-off, wrap-up, conversation,
ringing – these statuses are digestedly monitored. The
supervisor also controls statistical data about the CC traffic.
Technologies used during CC building-up
5
TECHNOLOGY
Tab. 1. Technologies used during CC building-up
TECHNOLOGY
DESCRIBTION
Voice server with interfaces:
4x EuroISDN BRA (8 voice
channels)
or
1x EuroISDN PRA (30 voice
channels )
CTI
E-mail processing
4x
8x
PBX
8x
8x
1x
port for connection to GSM
gate
port for connection of ACD
Server with option for
extension to 15 ports
port for connection of IVR
Server with option for
extension to 15 ports
port for connection of
Agents´ telephone devices
with option for extension to
15 ports
CTI interface with CSTA
protocol
ACD
Automatic distribution of incoming
telephone calls to available
operators.
IVR
System of interactive voice
responses providing automatic
response with option for switchover to CC Agent via ACD.
Configuration:
8x port to connect PBX with
option for extension to 15
ports
1x CTI interface with CSTA
protocol
- communication support with
MS-SQL 7/2000 data base
- fax on Demand
CALL
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM
Supervisor’s workstation for
monitoring of loading on entering,
queuing lines, agents´ statuses.
RECORDING
SYSTEM
WORKFORCE
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM
Web processing
Outbound dialler
DESCRIBTION
CTI Server enabling the
synchronization of a telephone
call being switched with the
information being transmitted
via LAN. The configuration
should provide traffic for 5
agents with option for extension
to 15 agents.
Processing of electronic mail
integrated to ACD for 5 agents
with option for extension to 15
agents.
Implementation of Chat and Call
back functions for 5 agents with
option for extension to 15
agents.
Server realizes outcoming calls.
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Šmondrk, K., “Inteligentní komunikace”,
CONVERGENCE, 5/ 2007, pp. 14-17
[2] Pradáč, J., “Kontaktní centra call centra”,
CONVERGENCE,7-8/ 2004, pp. 12-16
[3] Assaf Halevy., “Systém dbMotion řeší komunikaci ve
zdravotnictví”, CONVERGENCE, 2004, pp. 20-21
[4] Vaculik, J., Aplikácie nových technológií do riadenia
služieb, [online] Publikované 01/2005, Dostupné z
http://fpedas.uniza.sk/dopravaaspoje/2005/1/vaculik.pdf
[5] Kováčiková, M., Definícia služby Unified
Communications, Prínos UCs pre používateľov [online]
Publikované 2006, Dostupné z
http://ngnlab.ktl.elf.stuba.sk/joomla/index.php?option=c
om_content&task=category&sectionid=7&id=17&Itemi
d=36&lang=sk
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was a part of research activities conducted at
Slovak Technical University Bratislava, Faculty of
Electrical Engineering and Information Technology,
Department of Telecommunications, within the scope of the
project VEGA No. 1/3118/06 „Traffic in convergent
telecommunication systems and networks“.
Recording device.
Software equipment to predict the
number of agents during the
operating time for 5 agents, with
option for extension to 15 agents.
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