1. The OnviSource Call Center Product Suite contains a vast array of applications including workforce management, monitoring, and desktop unification. What are your areas of emphasis for 2008?
There’s been a trend in the industry the last few years to transition call centers from “reactive cost centers” to “proactive profit centers”. A successful transition, however, requires a paradigm shift and a new generation of call center solutions. Such new generation solutions would offer multiple workforce optimization tools in one, integrated product, instead of point solutions from different vendors. Additionally, new generation solutions would automate agent transactions through agent automation tools and pre-packaged business applications; as well as directly support virtual environments.
It is our strategy to position OnviSource as a leader in delivering the new generation that will contribute to the paradigm shift.
Our OnviCenter 6 Product Suite emphasizes three major areas:
• Offer fully integrated and inter-working workforce optimization (WFO) solutions by employing all WFO layers without the costs, complexities and risks associated with the procurement, integration and management of independent products or point solutions. In other words, optimize the operations “around” the agent.
• Provide simplification, unification and automation for agent desktop applications through agent transaction and workflow automation tools; as well as the pre-packaged business applications to optimize the operations “for” the agent.
• Support and facilitate virtualization for total management of virtual environments including distributed agents and internal subject matter experts. In other words, everyone can become a competent and skilled agent.
We emphasize “highly affordable” pricing of our products and services for mass deployment in every call center and every enterprise – enabling every enterprise to become a total virtual call center.
2. Your company has many established competitors in many of the markets mentioned above, i.e. Workforce Management - Aspect, IEX, Verint; Monitoring - Autonomy etalk, NICE, Verint. How do you differentiate your offerings from your competitors?
Major differentiating factors are a total solution offering, applicability to meet the industry’s requirements, affordable pricing and customer support services; not just in one-to-one product feature comparisons.
I don’t think any call center manager would deny the value of each product in the stack of call center solutions (i.e., recording, QM, WFM, speech analytics, agent automation, virtualization). One specific call center may value one layer more than the others, but it is obvious that each layer will contribute in a positive way. The costs, complexities and the risks associated with procuring, integrating and managing independent products from multiple vendors are prohibitive. We have created a major differentiation by offering integrated WFO, agent automation, pre-packaged business applications and virtualization all in one product that is fully integrated, highly affordable and from a single vendor.
Applicability of the product and pricing compatibilities to meet customer requirements and budgets, especially in the SMB market, are also the driving factors in differentiating OnviSource’s products from others.
Finally, we have made major investments and implemented innovative initiatives to foster “customer loyalty”. We strongly believe that our intense focus on customer service and support is a major differentiating factor.
3. How will OnviSource compete with these established industry “players” who may have larger R&D and marketing budgets than your company?
OnviSource’s diversified, synergistic business model, as well as its growth, has made it profitable with a positive cash flow since 2005. That profitability is directly invested back into the company. Additional capital has been available to OnviSource for rapid growth. OnviSource has been able to expand from 70 employees to over 200 employees since 2005, doubled its overall revenues, rolled out new integrated products and expanded its facilities in both Oklahoma and Texas. We have made significant investment in our R&D and customer loyalty programs for 2008 and will continue such investment as the best technology solutions and customer services remain the focal point of our business.
4. What do you believe will be your greatest challenges in 2008?
Branding.
We need to get our name and message out to a large portion of the call center industry and to demonstrate our unique and new generation products so the industry is aware of our integrated solutions, our highly affordable prices and our customer-centric loyalty programs.
5. What trends in the contact center market do you anticipate in 2008? What do you believe will be the “hot” applications?
The number of small to med size call centers will double or triple, while the number of larger call centers will decline; as has been the case in the last few years.
Call centers will be faced with the three conflicting objectives: cost reduction, revenue increase and customer satisfaction. Therefore, call centers will seek to achieve these objectives through utilization of an integrated WFO solution stack (recording, QM, WFM, Speech Analytics, Etc.); focusing on agent performance through agent automation tools and virtualization.
Hence, the following will become major requirements and hot applications:
• Best practices in utilizing workforce optimization tools, especially in quality management, screen capture, workforce management and speech analytics
• Agent automation with pre-packaged call center business applications is a new hot requirement due to its value in preventing costly mistakes, providing automated coaching, significantly reducing the cost of training and re-training, updating and distributing information valuable to agents, increasing both customer and agent satisfaction and presenting a uniform customer experience in a virtual environment.
• Virtualization – Distribution of calls based on dispersed call centers, remote agents, load sharing, business sharing, redundancy and disaster recover.
6. There is much discussion of a recession in 2008. How do you believe a slower economy will affect our industry?
OnviSource presented a special webcast through CRMxchange that addressed this exact issue. The changing of the economy will force call centers to further focus on their conflicting goals of cost reduction, revenue increase and customer satisfaction. There will be little tolerance for unproductive agents, dissatisfied customers and programs that don’t contribute enough to revenues. We believe that such drivers will force our industry to search for affordable technologies, best practices and competencies that can directly contribute to achieving their objectives. Industry will demand lower prices for more integrated solutions with minimal Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
7. Have user’s requirements changed in recent years? If so, how?
Call centers are evolving to become more proactive and more critical to the business of enterprises. Call center contributions to revenue increase and customer satisfaction while maintaining low operating costs are becoming more visible to the executives of such enterprises. Subsequently, call centers expect more from the technology to offer tools that can directly contribute to revenue increase, cost reductions and customer satisfaction.
While the demand for recording and quality monitoring continues to expand, call centers are recognizing the value of additional call center optimization tools, such as quality assurance, workforce management, performance management and speech analytics.
Agent automation tools and pre-packaged business applications are recognized for significantly contributing to the achievement of call center objectives.
Call centers are moving toward the implementation of remote agents and virtualization, as they can maximize the productivity and availability of call center labor, offer additional business opportunities using business partners, and provide solutions for load sharing, redundancy, overflow and disaster recoveries.