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Success Story, Affiliated Computer Services (ACS)

CSI Impact: Helped ACS dramatically reduce caller opt out to live agents by as much as 10 percent resulting in millions of dollars in savings.

Summary

• CSI supported large business process outsourcer's (BPO) cost savings initiatives.
• Developed numerous IVR applications for ACS that significantly improved contact center automation.
• CSI shared IVR services a cornerstone of ACS contact center strategy.

Contact Solutions (CSI) is a trusted partner to many leading business process outsourcers and has helped them save millions of dollars through its shared IVR services. One of our top BPO partners, ACS, has been one of the largest providers of outsourced contact center services to state and local governments and commercial entities for more than 30 years. ACS helps government customers find practical ways to manage and improve programs so people and communities are better served.

For example, ACS helps serve the needs of women, infants, and children (WIC) programs and makes sure child support payments get to the right parent. They manage local and statewide transportation challenges, solving issues, and relieving congestion. They help the uninsured get the health care services they need, and streamline back-office functions like human resources and government records management. CSI has helped the ACS reduce the costs associated with its government contracts significantly by implementing remarkably efficient contact automation solutions. These cost savings have opened the door to pursue more opportunities.

CSI also has a commitment to ensuring that citizens receive the highest level of service from the government agencies that support them. By optimizing client contact automation through its shared IVR service, callers are able to get their account and other information quickly, correctly, and efficiently. By providing a very high level of service at the IVR, callers are less inclined to opt out to more expensive live agents, which contributes to cost savings. CSI shared IVR services optimize the ACS programs by considering everything that has to do with the IVR, from its underlying architecture, to integration with contact centers (CTI), to the user interface.

Some of the reasons why the relationship has been so successful include:

CSI is Goal Congruent with our BPO Partners. BPOs continuously look for ways to reduce contact center costs while maintaining high-level customer service to their customers. CSI is driven to help them improve contact automation rates, which means more calls will be handled by the CSI shared IVRs. These are typically calls that should not be going to live agents. CSI works with BPOs continuously to ensure that their customer's needs are met in the IVR by monitoring call flows and caller behavior.

On demand pricing facilitates more precise bids. CSI gets paid on the number of calls handled by its shared IVRs and reports regularly to our BPO clients about call volume and other related information. This information helps them understand how to better price similar bids.

Experts Focused Exclusively on IVR. CSI employees are focused on everything related to IVRs and the applications they design, build, and monitor. This dedication to one technology is represented by the company's Centers of Excellence, which represents every IVR touch point. This dedication frees up the BPO IT staff to focus on other core contact center technologies. It also improves call containment, which reduces the number of live agents required.

Redundancy and Geographic Diversity of IT Centers. CSI has two completely redundant and fully functional IT facilities in Virginia and Texas. This ensures continuous availability and, if needed, hot disaster recovery.

Centralized Platform Allows Advanced Contact Center Integration. The BPO reaps the benefits of the complete turnkey service around the IVR. Built-in benefits of the shared IVR service include CTI & Intelligent Call Routing and shorter call setup time. CSI also supports 24/7 monitoring of the IVR, application, voice/data network, database integrations, and all contact center connectivity.

Significant improvements happen across the IVR spectrum including:

• Improvements in containment rate
• Decrease in live agent talk time
• Delivery of caller information to live agents
• Reduction in total inbound calls
• Improved access to customer data
• Reduction of IVR call length
• Script changes & re-recording

• Reporting tools to manage staffing needs
• Flexible routing for at-home workers
• Centralized telecom augments site consolidations
• Powerful platform to implement additional best practices
• Simple, quick cost savings approach for immediate results

Examples of CSI IVR applications at work for our BPO partners:

Credit/Debit Card Management

Through continuous monitoring, call flow analysis, and integration tuning, Contact Solutions recommends options for improving response times and reducing the number of calls transferred to live agents. As a result, our BPO partners have experienced the following dramatic improvements in their applications:

• Extremely high call automation rate improvements by streamlining the IVR and redesigning client interfaces
• IVR call length reduction, which eliminates millions of IVR minutes annually
• User error handling modification to reduce transfers to live agents

Tax Refund Information Line

During 2004, legislation required states to refund taxes collected for broadband access. Certain states that had been collecting taxes for this service mandated that ISPs operating in their state pro-actively notify subscribers that they were eligible for a refund. Contact Solution's shared IVR services provided an application to inform subscribers about the legislation, explained how they could request a refund, and transferred them to a contact center to request more information.

• Single, toll-free number for subscribers to receive information or assistance
• Automated transfer to the live contact center eliminated the need for a separate call for assistance

Healthcare Application

CSI developed a health care application for state governments that provides information for members, providers and nurse aide providers. Members receive information on their eligibility and account status. Providers are able to check on payments and validate member eligibility, co-payment amounts, and approved referrals. The IVR system interfaces with multiple databases to provide a higher level of service to the caller.

• Integration between IVR and live agent present the caller's record on the agent's terminal which means the caller does not need to repeat information they've already entered into the IVR.
• Automates member transactions such as authentication, eligibility status, service limit, and co-payment information.
• Provider transactions such as authentication, payment information, eligibility status, and claims status are automated.