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Call center scripting tools have had to adapt to new technology - particularly the web - and increased customers' demands. Some technology eases the traditional customer service process, while some changes have made the customer/agent interaction much more complex.
Yesterday's clipboard is today's desktop PC, a user-friendly (we hope) screen designed to give the agent all available information about the customer, the product, and whatever information he or she can use to cross-sell, up-sell, and ensure the customer's ultimate happiness. Yesterday's index cards are today's scripting screens, yielding access to a richer, and hopefully far more dynamic, assortment of exquisitely context-sensitive pitches and responses.
Key to that dynamism is integration with the customer relationship management function. We don't know what to tell that customer until we know who he is, what he's purchased before, what his tech support problems have been, and what his business is worth to the enterprise. And the "conversation," or call flow, can branch off in a compass-full of directions. So the more that scripting can be triggered or influenced by call events and business processes, the more effective it can be in guiding agents.
In the words of James Mitchell, senior vice president and CTO of Davox: "The scripting tools will evolve into the call flow component of the CRM process." And Bob Vilsoet, director of systems integration for SBC Call Center Solutions Group (San Antonio, TX - 210-821-4105, www.sbc. com): "What is needed now is a scripting tool that encompasses the design of the whole call center's work flow. So that one script can be generated that encompasses business logic included in the switch, IVR, CTI, and database lookups."
John Covici, vice president of marketing for Davis Software, gave us a good example of why a script needs to be dynamic and adaptable. "You go into a grocery store looking for a chicken dinner. And don't forget your vegetable, your starch (read: cross-selling). You're at the counter, ready to pay, when you notice that lobsters are on sale. Now you have a whole other set of options that go from there." Your call center script must branch similarly.
Probably the biggest change in contact centers, the one driving any new manufacturers of scripting tools, and haunting those who...