The Problem

A 2004 Harvard Business Review study showed that customer service has 5 times the influence on a customer’s perception of your company than does the price, the marketing, or the quality of your product.   The most critical service is delivered by the call center agent on the front line of customer care.

Yet, agent desktops all too frequently resemble air traffic control screens.  As call centers evolve and new services are rolled out, additional applications are added to the agent workspace.  Navigating the clutter and retyping information into these multiple applications slows the agent interaction, increases the chance of errors, and ultimately increases costs.  And, for new hires, the learning curve can be long indeed.

The Solution

Upstream Works’ UpStart family of solutions automates and coordinate multiapplication agent desktops and workflows based on the customer’s prior experiences and current needs.  UpStart acts as an interaction assistant for the agent, by providing customer call information, control, tools and ready access to knowledge in a responsive and easy to use interface.  Through UpStart, agent tasks are automated, speeding up your call processes and minimizing chances of manual mistakes.

UpStart bridges the gap between single application agent desktops from telephony vendors and “unified desktop” solutions. 

Though ROI is easily justified based on typical 20-30 second AHT reductions alone, the customer history and knowledge tools support First Call Resolution to reduce the total number of calls.  Integration of UpStart with UpTake automates First Call Resolution tracking, backed up with call by call performance data.

UpStart technology is also available for integration directly into existing purpose-built unified applications.

Feature Highlights

• Multiapplication automation of any number/type of existing desktop applications
• Fully blended phone/email/chat support, with identical workflow and automation for all channels
• Knowledge base for secure access to local and partner information
• Customer history shows agents all previous contacts across all channels, including abandons
• One click transfer of all customer fields from one application to another
• Agent to supervisor/agent chat for in call assistance
• Rich set of agent tools to cut handle time and solve real world interaction problems
• Multisite support preserves information collected at first site for automation at the second site
• Intuitive to use – minimal training required
• Adoption high as agents like to use it
• Identical operation in Cisco, Avaya, Nortel environments