Achieving strong and lasting customer relationships through increased agents proficiency and reliability with IBM Watson Explorer. Discover its benefits!

1. Data Sheet
IBM Software Information Management
IBM Watson Explorer
for inbound call centers
Achieving strong and lasting customer relationships
through increased agent proficiency and reliability
with IBM WatsonExplorer.
Background
Call centers are informational hubs of organizations, resonating with
the voices of the customers. If utilized accurately, they can collect
new target customers. In order to do this, call centers must manage
call volume efficiently, controlling average handle time (AHT) and
enriching every customer interaction. In some cases, they must
achieve this with tighter budgets. Instant access to all customer and
product data is mandatory to enable call centers to operate more
efficiently. With departments and information spread across various
locations, this task can seem daunting. IBM Watson™
Explorer,
however, allows call centers to overcome these challenges and run at
peak performance.
Successful customer-driven companies understand that each customer
is an asset: an asset to be valued, protected and maximized. The value
of customers, however, is determined by their relationship with the
organization. Inbound call centers are very important to an enterprise,
as they are often times the most recent and frequented point of contact
that the customer has with an organization. The customers’ experience
with the call center is important in determining their loyalty and is one
of the primary determinants of their long-term asset value.
As organizations pursue strong customer relationships, they expect
their call center to:
• Nurture and grow customer relationships
• Improve productivity, reduce operating expenses and gain efficiencies
• Minimize agent turn-over and knowledge loss
• Reduce training costs and agent ramp-up time
• Contribute to market intelligence through better understanding
customer behavior
• Drive measurable improvements in call metrics and customer
satisfaction ratings
Benefits
• Improve productivity and reduce
operating expenses
• Minimize agent turn-over and
knowledge loss
• Nurture and grow customer relationships
• Maintain standards of efficiency through
call metrics

2. 2
Data Sheet
IBM Software Information Management
How Watson Explorer helps
call centers to succeed
Watson Explorer gives agents visibility into customer data
across all contact and interaction points within the
enterprise—irrespective of location, repository and format.
Federated discovery and navigation capabilities extend
Watson Explorer’s reach into information from external sites.
Watson Explorer aggregates all data and provides a single,
secure access point to relevant and real-time customer and
product information. A unified view of information helps
agents respond to customers concerns and issues quickly and
accurately. Relieved of the burden of navigating multiple
applications to find a single piece of relevant information,
agents can quickly resolve customer issues—reducing AHT
and efficiently managing call volume. Watson Explorer’s
dynamic data delivery and easy navigation allows the call
center to improve productivity and reduce operating expenses.
Watson Explorer reduced average handle
time (AHT) by three seconds, resulting in
millions of dollars savings annually for an
industry leader.
High attrition has always been a major concern for callcenter
managers. Re-hiring and re-training costs directly impact the
bottom line. More importantly, high turnover rates burden
agents, affect productivity and hamper the call center’s ability
to provide quality service. Watson Explorer helps call centers
lower attrition by minimizing the “excessive pressure and
stress of the call center environment,” which is cited as the
number two reason for attrition. With Watson Explorer’s
IO Pro feature, call center managers can quickly spotlight
new products for training and push information out to their
agents. By simplifying the way agents access customer and
product information and by providing ways for agents to
easily collaborate and share knowledge, Watson Explorer
reduces agent stress and consequently turnover. When
agents have the information needed to answer customer
questions and resolve issues confidently, they are much
better able to interact comfortably and build close and
lasting customer relationships.
Facilitating agent training
Watson Explorer also facilitates agent training. Inbound call
center agents never know what inquiry or problem they will
face on the other side of an inbound call. As such, they must
be well-versed on the products, services and policies of their
organization. Successfully training agents is vital to the
success of the call center. Watson Explorer enables new agents
to save key information into shared folders, allowing them to
access and use until they are fully trained. The cost of attrition
per agent is high, with new agents taking two months to
complete initial training in many industries. This can be
exacerbated as many call centers have a myriad of applications
and repositories, such as CRMs, ERPs and external databases,
that agents must learn to maneuver through to complete a
call. Watson Explorer’s ability to seamlessly connect to all of
these applications and provide a unified view to information
greatly reduces training time and cost. In one customer
deployment, Watson Explorer delivered value which equated to
141 FTEs, saving $11.2 million per year to a leading call center.
Sharing agent knowledge
Watson Explorer provides tagging, bookmarking and
commenting capabilities that promote knowledge share and
retention—even if an agent leaves. This enables agents to
maximize and enrich each customer interaction. It allows
agents to bookmark and share important customer
information for easy recall on future calls. Paired with
Watson Explorer’s real-time indexing, agents have the
assurance that relevant customer and product knowledge is
immediately available. Enterprise data is continually growing;
as a result, agents have even more information to learn and
retain. In addition, call centers are often scattered across
far-reaching locations without a system to support their
distributed architecture. Watson Explorer’s real-time indexing
solves this problem and allows data to grow without
compromising access or speed for agents. In addition it’s
seamless integration with SharePoint enables users to view
not only content stored within Microsoft SharePoint, but all
content, regardless of whether it is stored directly in
SharePoint or elsewhere. Agents can then concentrate on
listening to customer concerns and ensuring complete
satisfaction, enhancing the entire customer experience.

3. 3
Data Sheet
IBM Software Information Management
Capturing customer intelligence
Inbound call centers are charged with not only enhancing
the customer experience and generating revenue, but also
capturing customer data and intelligence. Watson Explorer
delivers visibility into this information and enables the call
center to present real-time customer intelligence to the
enterprise. Watson Explorer’s content aggregation and collating
capabilities enable the business to derive relevant customer
insights from the behaviors, trends and notes captured by agents.
Watson Explorer consolidates silos and
promotes the quick and easy transfer of
information and insight captured in the call
center across the entire enterprise. This allows
executives to make informed decisions that
impact the direction of the company.
Companies that employ Watson Explorer in their call centers
empower their agents to go beyond solving customer issues to
being customer advocates—listening and responding fittingly
to their needs. By actively listening, agents can turn a
complaint into a sale. Watson Explorer allows organizations
to react quickly to customer demands, innovate business
processes, profile new target markets and formulate ideas for
new product features. Watson Explorer consolidates silos and
promotes the quick and easy transfer of information and
insight captured in the call center across the entire enterprise.
This allows executives to make informed decisions that impact
the direction of the company.
Watson Explorer business value drivers
Increased customer visibility, responsiveness
and control
Organizations need visibility into customer information
in order to be reactive and identify needs that lead to new
products and services—driving profits. Watson Explorer
delivers actionable insight allowing executives to identify and
develop solutions that meet customer demands.
Improved knowledge discovery, retention
and application
Knowledge sharing and retention within the call center is
critical to productivity. When a call center leader can
minimize knowledge loss, they improve each customer
interaction, increase customer loyalty and enhance the entire
customer experience. This gives their organization an
immediate competitive advantage.
Greater leverage from existing resources
Deploying Watson Explorer breathes life into your call
enter, making agents more efficient and reducing the stress
in learning and executing daily functions. Businesses benefit
from empowered, productive agents who have access to
quality information learn quickly and collaborate efficiently,
delivering an immediate return on investment (ROI).
For more information
For more information on Watson Explorer, see
https://ibm.biz/BdRyVi

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