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IKANO News:
Title: IKANO's Call Center Expands Its Reach
By: Jennifer O’Herron, CallCenter
Date: Feb 5, 2001 (10:14 AM)
URL: http://www.callcentermagazine.com/article/CCM20010131S0009
Aside from fast and reliable internet connections, customer service can make all the difference in a customer's choice of an ISP.
Ikano, an ISP based in Salt Lake City, UT, offers customers dial-up Internet service, ISDN, DSL and wireless services. The company places a high emphasis on customer service since it primarily deals with Internet branding, which lets companies provide Internet service to their customers or affiliates. For example, one of Ikano's customers is a pharmaceutical company. The pharmaceutical company offers Web sites and e-mail addresses to doctors as a way of extending its brand name. Another Ikano client is a university, which allows students to maintain the same e-mail accounts and addresses even after they graduate from college (e.g., joherron@theuniversityname.edu).
Ikano designs its clients' Web sites and maintains all of the Web servers and back-end systems. It also handles all of the customer service and technical support. Ikano originally grew out of Sisna, a company that provides regional Internet service within the Salt Lake City area. In 1998, Ikano was created to specialize in Internet branding services and landed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City as its first customer.
Ikano has more than 200 Internet branded clients and provides support to all of its clients' customers. Two years ago, only six people worked in the customer service department. Today, Ikano has about 120 customer service employees. Because of this recent growth the company has made significant investments in its call center.
Moving On Up
In July 2000, Ikano opened a new 30,000 square foot customer service and technical support center, five miles from the company's headquarters in Salt Lake City. Previously, the call center was located within the same building as the headquarters. “We're only using about a quarter of the space but eventually we'll be able to house over 1,200 agents,” says Todd Krause, Ikano's customer service director. Approximately 100 agents work in the call center, which is open 24x7 365 days a year.
Agents work in teams according to their skills. Each team consists of a maximum of ten agents and a supervisor who oversees the group. Some examples of teams include DSL and ISDN support, Web support, support for Spanish-speaking customers and a team that signs up new members for service.
“The lion's share of the customer service calls that we receive are from people signing up for basic ISP service,” says Krause. “We also get calls from people who have problems connecting to the Internet or who have problems with their e-mail accounts.” Ikano receives between 35,000 and 40,000 calls a month. “Monday is usually our busiest day and on a busy day we get close to 2,000 calls,” he says. “On a slow day, like Sunday, we receive about 600 calls.” The call center aims to answer 90% of calls within 60 seconds and strives to keep call abandonment rates below 4%.
All of the technical support calls are logged in Ikano's Business Rules Server. This in-house software provides agents with a record of a customer's support history. All of Ikano's clients also have access to the Business Rules Server so they can view all of their customers' trouble tickets. “Everything is tied into the server so that if someone calls and says that they can't get on-line, an agent can look up the customer's password in the Business Rules Server,” says Krause.
One of the biggest issues for Ikano's call center is efficiently handling all of the different forms of communications that customers choose. To help route e-mail, text chat requests and Web callback requests in addition to phone calls, Ikano purchased Telephony@Work's (La Jolla, CA) CallCenter@nywhere just one year ago. “Every interaction is queued up the same as an incoming call,” says Krause.
Ikano's branded partners each have a separate toll-free phone number, so callers don't know that they are reaching Ikano. When the center receives an incoming call, the IVR component of CallCenter@nywhere greets the caller with the appropriate branded partner's name and provides an IVR menu from which customers can choose options for customer service, ISDN and DSL support, and general technical support. Once the software routes the call, agents receive screen pops that let them know which branded partner the customer is calling from so that they can greet them appropriately. Currently, screen pops don't identify or provide any personal information about the callers but Krause says that this is something that he's interested in providing in the future.
Web site communication works in a similar way to phone calls. Customers send e-mail messages, text chat requests and Web callback requests from the branded partner's Web site. “One big issue that customers have with call centers is e-mail response,” says Krause. “A customer will say, 'I sent an e-mail and I never received a response' or the customer doesn't receive a response within a reasonable time frame. CallCenter@nywhere lets us answer an e-mail within one hour of when it's received.” Even if the customer's issue cannot be fully resolved within the one-hour time frame, Ikano sends an acknowledgement that the e-mail was received. Krause says that the center receives up to 100 e-mail messages on a busy day. Ikano plans to send automatic replies to customers' e-mail when it upgrades to the latest version of CallCenter@nywhere.
“One of the big advantages of CallCenter@nywhere is that it's TCP/IP based sot since Ikano employs on-call agents who can work from home during periods of unexpected heavy call volume.
Ikano created its own on-line knowledge base for agents. “All of our manuals and all of the information about our branded partners is on-line,” he says. “All the information that reps need is at their fingertips, whether they are working from home or in the office.”
Text chat and Web callback requests are usually handled by advanced technical support reps, who typically work in the Web support group and the DSL and ISDN support group. On average, the center receives about 25 text chat requests a day. “An agent can handle up to five chats at once if we get inundated with requests,” says Krause. “It's easy for them to handle multiple chats since the text chat box lights up on the agent's PC every time the customer responds.” Krause says that the text chat requests are similar to requests that agents handle over the phone.
When Ikano experiences unexpected heavy volumes of phone calls and customers are on hold for extended periods of time, CallCenter@nywhere lets customers choose to receive a call back from agents instead of waiting on hold. The software maintains the customer's place in queue.
Currently, Krause schedules agents and predicts call volume manually using an Erlang C formula. By forecasting call volume based on the previous 30 days of call volume, Krause comes up with a schedule. He also adds five to six extra agents to each shift to account for when agents take their lunch hours and breaks. “We haven't used workforce management software in the past because it wasn't cost-effective,” he says. “But now that our staff is getting bigger I'm starting to look into it.”
Assuring Quality
Ikano's training for new and experienced agents is one of the most impressive aspects of Ikano's call center. “When we hire new agents we look for people with good customer service skills,” says Krause. “We can teach people a lot of the technical aspects but we can't teach great customer service - either you have a knack for it or you don't. Some of your best technical people may not necessarily be your best customer service people.”
The training department gives newly-hired agents a test to measure their technical abilities. Depending on how well agents score on the test, they spend either one or two weeks in training. “If an agent has worked for an ISP before, odds are that we'll only need to teach them how our company and our systems work,” says Krause. “If an agent has worked in a call center before but doesn't have any technical experience, then they'll probably go through the two-week training course.” Before an agent ever goes on the floor they have to pass a competency test with a score of 90% or better. If they don't pass the test they go back for another week of training and at the end of the week, they take another competency test.
Ikano's veteran agents also regularly receive ongoing training and follow up with competency tests to gauge how much they've learned. “The more information agents have, the better agents they'll be,” says Krause. “The worse thing that can happen is if a customer calls a technical support center and gets the runaround because the agents don't know the answer to the question. For our agents, all of the information they need is right at their fingertips provided they know where to look for it.”
The company's training department and quality management department are closely tied together. Ikano has a quality manager who monitors agents' phone calls and their work on their PCs. “By monitoring agents' screens we can make sure that they're finding accurate data and that they're logging the call into our Business Rules Server,” says Krause. The center typically monitors each agent three to four times a month.
The company also places a high value on customer feedback and e-mails customers a survey after every customer service and technical support call. “Before the surveys, we would only get feedback on the very good and the very bad,” says Krause. “We never heard about anything in between and we're always interested in feedback to find out how we're doing, what we're doing well, and what we need to improve.” Ikano began using the surveys in March 2000 and has so far received a total of 8,000 responses. As an incentive to get customers to return the surveys, Ikano offers drawings for prizes that include digital cameras and MP3 players. Agents also have to perform well. Every survey is weighted so that the rep with the highest survey score each week gets $100. The agent in second place receives $75; the prize for third place is $50 and $25 for fourth place. At the end of the month, the top ten agents who didn't place during the month also get a $25 bonus.Krause says that more than 93% of the people who responded so far have been satisfied or very satisfied with technical support. Of that 93%, almost 67% have been very satisfied. “Between 1% and 2% of customers have been dissatisfied but we learn the most from these customers because they tells us what we're doing wrong and what we have to do better,” he says.
What's Next
As the call center continues to expand, Ikano has plans to add more amenities to help enhance the work environment. Agents currently enjoy free popcorn and soft drinks in the center. “When we moved into the new building the first priority was to make sure that everything was up and running,” says Krause. “Now that we've done that, I'm looking to add a day care center and game room, along with other things to make people look forward to coming to work.”
The center is in the process of hiring more agents to assist Ikano's customers who speak foreign languages. Krause also hopes to hire more agents who will specialize in signing up new members. At press time, Ikano had plans to begin a sales incentive program early this year. The program will offer bonuses to agents who exceed their quota of new members.
As far as technology goes, Ikano's latest plans involve improving self-service on the Web. “Our biggest push right now is for more self-help solutions,” says Krause. “We want to have better on-line documentation so that people can find answers to their questions on the Web sites of our branded partners.” Ikano is also in the process of making an on-line knowledge base available to customers. “We're working on that diligently and hope to have it up and running shortly,” he says.
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