VisionMAX Case Studies

Background

The client sought to improve customer service while aggressively reducing the costs associated with the delivery of satellite TV services. Their call center was handling more calls than ever and associated costs were escalating.

VisionMAX proposed a self-serve initiative to address client needs more efficiently while reducing those costs.

This self-serve initiative was aimed at providing the client's customers a series of self-serve options, across multiple delivery channels, with the ultimate goal being a reduced number of calls to the call center while establishing an improved customer satisfaction level.

The functions to be addressed were:

• Vacation adjustment
• Cottage planner
• Additional receiver activation

It was determined that the functions must be accessible over multiple self-serve channels, namely:

• The client's corporate Web site
• An internal call center thin client application
• Telephone IVR (interactive voice response)
• Satellite interactive TV (iTV)
• Wireless

It was also critical to gather and document the associated business rules to a centralized rules engine. Documenting this ensures consistent application of business rules, with easier impact analysis and maintenance across various delivery channels.

The Solution:

VisionMAX built the solution on top of its VisionEngine application development and delivery platform. VisionEngine links a company's business rules with multiple back-office data sources and any front-end interface. With this, VisionMAX was able to achieve the following:

• Gathered and documented existing business rules and flows for the three self-serve functions.
• Centralized the business rules and flows in VisionEngine.
• Conferred with the business and marketing teams to define the new call flows and conversations (with associated wording) for self-serve functions.
• Integrated with existing back-end systems to pass validated customer transactions.
• Provided information to subscribers over all delivery channels requested, including a working wireless interface on a Blackberry.
• Created a self-serve administration portal for client administrators to modify call flows and business rules, and to monitor system usage.

Business rules are self-documenting and customer-updatable. Testing time is dramatically reduced when updates are required as the rules are stored as metadata rather than hard-coded, as in the past. A single series of data flows drives all five delivery front-ends.

The Results

This project put in place mechanisms that provided customers with self-serve functions on the delivery channel that best suited their needs and convenience. Thus, it liberated the live customer service representatives to handle more complicated calls.

Now the application is fully-integrated into the client's back-end systems, ensuring 360 degree service and control.

The system was able to be delivered in an aggressively short time frame (three months) and was on-budget.