Having served the cable industry for more than 20 years, Convergys is continuing its practice of upgrading its long-time customers through the product with its latest release of the Infinys ICOMS convergent BSS/OSS system.
The enhancements significantly improve the ability of both cable and DBS operators to deliver a superior service experience, particularly in the area of customer service and business intelligence.
A key enhancement is better tools for personalization and business intelligence. One such tool gives both Customer Service Representatives and back office operations personnel a 360-degree view of the customer through a completely new interface. Convergys has applied the wealth of human factors experience it has developed over the years in its outsourced care business.
“Everything we do now, even in back office, we bring in a human factors team and made it part of everything we develop,” said Scott Shippy, director of Cable Strategy at Convergys’ Information Management group. “This is where Convergys is in a unique position to leverage our call center knowledge. We have people who have been living their life in call centers; they’ve been trained on human factors and they put it back into the product.”
The new GUI presents all relevant customer information in a scripted format rather than product codes. It consolidates customer and service information on a single Web-based Infinys ICOMS agent desktop. “It provides CSRs with only those offers that make the most sense for the customer calling in. No longer does the CSR have to scroll through 100 offers; it will pinpoint the right offer,” Shippy said.
Convergys also says it has perfected the modular approach to integrated solutions. The modular, single-architecture system provides a building-block approach that lets operators tailor a product-driven billing platform for their specific business needs and avoid costly one-off customizations without committing to an end-to-end system.
However, an end-to-end solution is available. “In the 90s, everyone wanted end-to-end behemoth systems, then they went back to the building bloc idea. Clients today are at a strange point in the continuum. With ICOMS we can offer a complete end-to-end solution but by using building blocks,” Shippy said.
Key features of this new release include a faster, more accurate front-end process that speeds customer interactions and increases accuracy by reducing the number of orders required to activate service, as well as streamlined screens that consolidate customer and account information onto a single screen, providing a single view of the most frequently referenced customer data. The single screen-guided workflows serve to improve work order accuracy, reduce time-consuming contact center agent decision-making, decrease data entry errors, and cut down the time required for training.
