Monitoring! Monitoring! Monitoring!

Whenever we start talking about our remote availability and performance monitoring services (HeartBeat™), like I did just a few weeks ago during a monitoring webinar, there is invariably a little confusion at the outset about the differences between remote availability and performance monitoring, call recording/agent quality monitoring, and voice quality monitoring. So I thought it might be helpful and interesting to define these different monitoring methods in a blog post. And I promise to try to do it without talking like an engineer (too much). So here goes…

Call Recording/Agent Monitoring/Quality Monitoring refers to applications that record and capture data from conversations between customers and call center agents including tracking the agent desktop transcript during customer interactions. The application allows supervisors to playback an agent-customer conversation and at the same time see exactly what the agent was doing during the call. Some of these applications involve speech analytics to assist with call trends analysis. This information allows contact center supervisors to assess agent performance and business rules in terms of efficiency and appropriateness, as well as to coach performance and offer self-paced training to agents who need it.

Voice Quality Monitoring in the IP Telephony world is typically an automatically generated mathematical assessment or grade that asserts how good a call sounded and how it would be rated by people if they were listening to the call at the same point the measurement is taken. There are different ways to calculate Voice Quality; I’ll try to provide a few simple definitions of a few of the common methods:

• PESQ asserts what listeners would think based on the technology involved in the process and the measured performance of the network carrying the traffic.
  
• QoS is a way to look at and rate multiple characteristics about a call so ultimately you can try to improve on each of the characteristics until the quality is satisfactory.
  
• MOS is literally a subjective assessment by a bunch of people in a room voting on how good a call sounds.
  
• R Factor is a number or score that tries to quantify the subjective MOS assessment made by a bunch of people in a room.

Suffice it to say that a sniffer (or router) that watches voice samples and packets going by can determine how much packet loss, jitter, and delay is happening at the network segment where it’s inspecting the packets. It can also score the call, and report the score on an instantaneous or call by call basis. That’s voice quality.

The servers that make up an IP telephony implementation, whether contact center or unified communications, are constantly monitoring and reporting on voice quality and notifying staff in some fashion if voice quality gets out of an acceptable range. It’s really important to note that in an IP world, voice quality can be really great in one spot, and really lousy somewhere else. And depending on how the path is stitched together, the voice quality numbers reported can be 100% accurate but misleading, i.e., the audio could be completely unintelligible for some reason, but the network could be carrying that garbled audio perfectly, resulting in a perfect score. On the other hand, the network may distort the audio somewhat due to packet loss or jitter, resulting in a less than perfect calculated score, yet the message could easily be intelligible by a real person. Fun, huh?

Remote Availability & Performance Monitoring is an external monitoring method that periodically calls or interacts with self-service customer facing solutions to ensure they are available and performing as expected. It is external because the transaction is generated outside the system being monitored just like a real end-user transaction.

Let’s step back a minute. Think about how a contact center is put together. Now overlay the sequence of interactions a caller has with the self-service or communications technology and all its supporting functionality (e.g., switching, routing & hunting, speech reco and text-to-speech technologies, data access & retrieval methods, CTI screen pop, etc.). Now associate each step of a typical telephone call with a unique part of the contact center’s self-service infrastructure including CTI and routing processes required to transfer a call to an agent as well. Because each test call follows a carefully defined script from the time the equipment goes off-hook and dials all the way through the end of the call, a remote availability and performance monitoring transaction acts just like a customer doing a specifically defined activity (such as checking an account balance, reporting a power outage, etc.). It verifies at each step that the system is saying exactly what is expected and responding to the end-user’s inputs within established response time thresholds. It is accessing and interacting with the self-service system. By doing so it is literally monitoring the availability and performance of that system. If the test call process determines the system is not saying what it is supposed to at any step, or taking too long to respond to end-user inputs, notifications alert someone specifically designated to assess the severity of the issue and to deal with it.

So there you have it – Agent Monitoring, Voice Quality Monitoring, and Remote Availability and Performance Monitoring – side-by-side.

Mike Burke

www.iq-services.com
6601 Lyndale Ave South, #330
Minneapolis, MN 55423

Poll Results and Filling the Gap between Internal Metrics and Customer Experience

Last week I had the opportunity to present a webinar called “Internal Monitoring Isn’t Enough.” It was an opportunity for me to educate attendees about a critical gap many companies haven’t bridged between internal performance stats and the true picture of how their contact center and communications solutions are performing – in other words, the customer experience. The simple method (or in our case, the cost-effective service) we discussed for filling this gap is Remote Availability & Performance Monitoring (RAPM)*. As you all know, polls in webinars are good, so we included several in our webinar to get a sense of the make-up and experiences of our audience. Not surprisingly, more than 60% of the attendees identified themselves as IT or service providers.

Much more interesting were the responses to our poll questions about what people are doing today to find out if their systems are working.

* Over 60% experienced outages lasting 2 or more hours
* 30% reported outages going undetected for more than a day
* Only 1 in 3 attendees relied on some kind of monitoring at all to learn about customer-impacting technology issues
* Another 13% get performance news weekly when they review performance reports or have no idea at all

Most shocking of all to us (despite the fact that we sell services to address this problem) was the following poll results:

* More than 55% of the respondents indicated they count on call center agents or customer complaints to tell them about customer-impacting technology issues!!!

Ultimately it appeared that 68% respondents were not proactively trying to determine how communications technologies impact customers.

Can you imagine trying to drive a car that’s low on oil for 2 hours before the Check Engine light comes on? Or driving with a flat tire for more than a day?

You wouldn’t do these things intentionally unless you thought it was too hard or you didn’t have an alternative to fix the issue. Similarly, no one would intentionally irritate customers (and ultimately the agents who talk with customers) hoping their complaints would provide enough information to help resolve a technology issue.

But off course that’s why we held the webinar in the first place…to let folks know there is a simple and effective way to sample and report upon customer experience that also lets you know exactly what’s going on so you can ACT when it matters.

Mike Burke

You Are Here

Last week, we were talking with a few people from a well-known research institute. We were just introducing ourselves and one of the women started talking about quality and service assurance issues for the contact center. She talked about the value of bottoms up and top down metrics for the contact center. But she also talked about a lingering gap that still remains when it comes to the ability to associate this plethora of great information with what is really happening to customers at a given moment. How do you effectively and simply put all that info into context? There are so many cures out there like speech analytics and surveys. And yet the cures sometimes come with more obstacles to overcome like: high costs, information overload, disassociation from actual transactions, lack of real time data and the possibility that the cure could itself impact the customer experience (e.g., a survey).

That’s where we got to jump in and say “Thank you for making our sales pitch for us.” She was effectively describing the gap our services fill.

Do you remember the first time you went to a mega mall or foreign airport? Do you remember how relieved you were when you found the map with the little yellow “You are here” arrow? That’s what remote availability and performance monitoring does for people navigating the megamall of contact center performance technologies and metrics. It offers the simple, straightforward view of integrated technology performance without impacting an actual customer. By monitoring the steps of a real end-user interaction, it lets you know when something goes wrong in the interaction and where to look for the problem. It provides that little yellow arrow saying “start here.” In the whirlwind of data (e.g., AHT, BHCC, abandoned calls, etc. etc.), remote availability and performance monitoring provides context so your data isn’t just data, it is actionable information.

Want to learn more? Join us for a live webinar on Tuesday, March 16 at 1 PM Central or download the recording whenever the time is right for you: REGISTER HERE.

Marla Geary

www.iq-services.com
6601 Lyndale Ave South, #330
Minneapolis, MN 55423

What’s on Your Roadmap this Week?

Just for fun, I thought it might be interesting to talk about some of the exciting trends we’re seeing in the industry. If you work for a company that owns, supports, services or sells to contact centers, you no doubt have a similar list of your own. You’ve probably got a roadmap that identifies the trends appropriate to your market and how you can best leverage and evolve your product or service to meet tomorrow’s customer requirements.

So here’s a partial list of the things we have addressed or are preparing to address with our services in the near future:

• Multichannel touchpoints
• SIP
• Cloud services
• Virtualization
• Unified (not merely converged) contact centers that extend into the enterprise
• Virtual contact centers, i.e., contact centers without walls
• Voice + Visual
• Video self-service
• Multi-modal transactions that demonstrate, not merely explain

As pipes get bigger, servers faster and applications more capable, the user experience gets richer and your responsibilities become more complex. Our challenge is to find ways to help you evaluate and monitor those complex and ever-evolving end-user interactions. In order to do that, we have to shut up and listen to where you are going with your plans to implement, support, service or sell contact center technologies.

So what’s around the corner for you? What challenges/opportunities are you prepared to take advantage of? Who are you listening to? You may only be self-service IVR with screen-pop to an agent today, or perhaps a website with a click-to-chat window, but you probably already know what’s coming if you don’t already have it.

Mike Burke
http://www.iq-services.com/
6601 Lyndale Ave South, #330
Minneapolis, MN 55423

Being a Small Business: Part 3

A couple of weeks ago, Gregg Williams kicked off a blog series about “Being a Small Business.” He wrote about a question that many small businesses hear from their prospects.

Why should I do business with a small business?”

Gregg talked about some of the advantages of working with small businesses and posed the very interesting and amusing question “Given all the great stuff small businesses can do, why would you want to do business with one of those bigger guys?”

The following week, Jim Jenkins weighed in on the topic. He pointed out that small businesses have the opportunity and responsibility to stay close to customers and to see every business opportunity as a partnership, not merely a transaction.

In Part 3 of this series, I’d like to explore the “Why should I do business with a small business?” question from a slightly different angle. What I’ve learned over the years is that sometimes a prospect asks this question when what they really mean is “If I invest time and resources into a partnership with you, how will I know your small business will still be around in 6 months or a year?”

When you get this kind of concern from a prospect, you want to help them get comfortable with partnering with your small business. You want them to share your confidence that a small business can be a partner they can turn to year after year. Small businesses play a pivotal role in many markets. They make products and services accessible to customers who might not otherwise have an appropriate option. Small businesses provide that all important alternative to the “Big Guy” in the market who might otherwise monopolize price, distribution, scope and more. I want my prospects to know I understand our special role in the food chain.

So how do I get customers to understand all this? Clearly each small business has its own way of addressing the “How do I know you’ll be here?” question. At IQ Services, the initial answer sounds something like…

Because we want to be here. Because we care. Because we have fun. Because we know where the industry is going. Because we listen. And because IQ Services builds partnerships that grow into relationships.

And then we get to the “prove it” stage of the conversation. That’s where our service offering roadmap comes in…

Our roadmap is the tangible evidence of our experience, care, market knowledge, listening skills and commitment to being a reliable partner. Our roadmap is about doing a better job of what we already do for our customers as well as anticipating and providing testing techniques and services that will help customers have confidence the next time they implement that “next big” thing in their contact center.

When prospects understand we have a vision and roadmap for our offerings and for staying relevant in the market, they get comfortable. Prospects recognize our sincerity. In our case, they sense our very real commitment to staying in business so the marketplace has an expert, cost-effective testing service to turn to when the “Big Guy” can’t move quick enough or provide that high-touch service that meets their unique needs. We know our presence in the marketplace makes remote testing and monitoring available to companies that don’t have the internal resources (time, money, schedule, expertise, and commitment) to do it themselves.

So what are other small businesses doing to address “will you be here tomorrow” question. Do you agree this is the question prospects are asking? Let us know what you think. mgeary@iq-services.com.

Marla Geary
http://www.iq-services.com/
6601 Lyndale Ave South, #330
Minneapolis, MN 55423

Positive customer experiences

One of the things that’s really cool about working for IQ Services is the customer experience we get.

Because we test systems remotely – from the outside in, just like your customers use them – we very rarely go on-site. Not that we haven’t. But the vast majority of the time we just don’t do it because we don’t have to. The upside to this methodology is our customers don’t have to do anything to their systems for us to be able to test or monitor. They don’t have to get us security credentials to be onsite. And because travel & shipping aren’t required, it’s all very cost-effective.

The downside is we don’t meet our customers face-to-face. Not that that’s required in today’s virtual world. But it’s just friendlier when you can look someone in the eye, read their body language, and get to know them on a more personal level. Especially when you go through the wringer with them like we often do during performance testing engagements at 3am on a Saturday.

Now the exception to all this is trade shows. IQ Services exhibits at something like 14 or 15 trade shows each year. It’s our chance to find out what’s on customers’ minds, the new trends in the industry and of course generate new leads. But then there’s this other thing that happens almost all the time – I’ll be going through my pitch with a new prospect and somebody will stroll up, badge flipped so you can’t read the name, the way they always are. And as I get to the punch line or value prop, the “stranger” pipes in with something like “You should use these guys – they really help out a lot. Let me tell you what I learned…”

And then they go into their story, and start selling for us.

Like I said, it’s really cool! This happens at almost every trade show, sometimes more than once. Let’s face it…we have a very narrow niche and a really obscure service. When someone comes over to meet us & gets rolling with our sales pitch, it’s really neat. One year a very grateful customer wandered over, dropped to his knees & bowed down in front of our booth. That got some real attention! We had no idea who he was until he spoke - now that’s a customer experience worth savoring!


Mike Burke

http://www.iq-services.com/
6601 Lyndale Ave South, #330
Minneapolis, MN 55423

Starbucks and Network Security

Mike Burke likes to share the spotlight with his co-workers so Tom Ring - IQ Services' Information Security Manager - is stepping in to let you know what he is thinking about these days.

You’re in your local coffee shop, and they are nice enough to provide free WiFi for the use of their patrons. You fire up the laptop and see that there are multiple access points available there. You pick one and connect. You just connected to a poisoned hotspot being run from a parked car. You’ve got network access through their cell provider, and they are sniffing every packet. Just because an access point says it is Joe’s Coffee Shop doesn’t mean that it really is.

You’re in another coffee shop that uses authentication and encryption and you only see one access point to connect to, which you then do. Everything is just fine and you get down to work. The problem is that within just a few minutes every packet you send and receive is being logged by the guy 2 tables down. Your company email account is now wide open to him. What happened? The encryption that the shop uses is just a little out of date. In fact, current wireless encryption methods have probably all been cracked. WEP was cracked in 2005 and currently takes less than 60 seconds, WPA v1 can be broken using aircrack-ng, WPA TKIP (currently the best method commonly available) was demonstrated in November of 2008 to be crackable in as little as 12 minutes regardless of the password or key length. Current WiFi encryption is not to be trusted.

So what are you to do? There is a solution, and your IT department probably already provides it – it’s a VPN tunnel. A VPN tunnel is a virtual private network connection back to your network at work. This is an authenticated encrypted tunnel that securely transports data to and from the internal network at your office. It can be used regardless of how insecure the coffee shop is, and it has another advantage – it gives you access to all the resources that you have when in the office. Files servers, wikis, chat server, everything, assuming that no limitations have been put into place by IT for VPN users.

Please note that you still need to have your laptop protected against incoming attacks. So no open shares, have a firewall in place, no services available on any ports, etc. Again, look to your IT department for assistance in making sure that everything else, as well as your VPN, is ready for the road.

Tom Ring

IQ Services
6601 Lyndale Ave South Suite 330
Minneapolis MN 55423
612-243-5114
http://www.iq-services.com/