Three years ago, Cisco found that it had a problem. As a very large organization it offered over 50 different contact centers to help customers  with placing orders, tracking shipments, resolving technical issues, answering financial inquiries, and all the various interactions required  to keep the business flowing. The problem was that the average caller required a large rolodex just to keep track of all the various numbers to call and marketing collateral to help them navigate through a complex phone menu. 

Callers would frequently reach the “wrong” number or the “wrong” organization to address their needs—causing confusion, wasted efforts, and frustration for callers. This had an impact on results from the Walker Survey‘s question on ease of doing business with Cisco. As you can see in the table below, “ease of doing business” was significantly lower than Cisco’s overall customer satisfaction rating.

Table 1. Ease of Doing Business Results vs. Overall Customer Statisfaction

Fiscal Year	FY 2005	FY 2006	FY 2007
Ease of Doing Business with Cisco	4.01	4.07	4.11
Overall Cisco Customer Satisfaction	4.37	4.36	4.40

To address the results of the survey and feedback from customers, Cisco implemented one-stop service through the Customer Interaction Network (CIN).  The CIN is a front-line organization that offers live agent support to answer a variety of requests or route callers to the right expert.  The CIN helped abstract the complexity of Cisco’s fifty contact centers by streamlining access to Cisco resources.  With CIN’s implementation, ease of doing business scores have continuously improved, but the customer experience was not consistent across Cisco.

The next stage is to move beyond ease of access towards ease of interaction—how can we give customers the power to get the information they need seamlessly, ideally within one interaction, and regardless of whether they first called into the CIN or directly into another contact center.  This is a challenge since Cisco’s contact center landscape contains:

• Over 50 contact centers (not including the Technical Support Centers)
• Over 4000 agents
• Approximately 30 outsourcing vendors
• 25 supported languages
• Almost 30 tracking tools

Cisco has started an ambitious “Contact Center Unification Framework” initiative that will provide both a better customer experience and save a significant percentage of outsourcing and IT costs by standardizing on just a few vendors.

The Price of Nimbleness

Looking at the numbers today, it may seem silly to have allowed such a proliferation of contact centers, all providing some level of service to Cisco’s customers. However, it is important to point out that the very cause of the proliferation of contact centers, that is, the ability of any group in the company to quickly create a team to take care of any customer issues, has also allowed Cisco to move very nimbly.  Each contact center is able to specialize in specific customer segments, initiatives, or product lines. The lack of concentration may have created duplication and confusion, but also plenty of successful, just-in-time contact centers.  From small one to two person contact centers that take care of investors’ queries to very large two hundred people contact centers such as the front-end to the worldwide technical support team.  

Being nimble has had a significant impact on spending, especially for outsourcers.  The Contact Center Unification Framework will address this by creating an environment of collaboration across Cisco’s contact centers.  Today, it is quite possible for one group in the company to terminate a relationship with a given outsourcer because of a bad experience while another group is negotiating a new relationship with that very same outsourcer.  Additionally, it is possible to have different negotiated rates with the same outsourcer for contact center services.  The Contact Center Unification Framework will create a community space, using innovative web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and forums, for contact center managers to collaborate, ask questions and get to know each other.  Collaboration will create a culture shift that will organically address the duplicative, functionally focused efforts. 

Improving the User Experience

Although the initiative has the potential to bring excellent savings for Cisco, the focus remains on improving the customer experience. Even with the improvements to ease of access into Cisco through the CIN, customers may reach a contact center that is not able to help them or, worse yet, the contact center they reach may not know where to direct their call.  At the same time, each contact center has its own style of communication with customers, which creates an inconsistent Cisco brand experience.

Therefore, the main focus of the initiative is to provide each customer with a consistent interface with Cisco and the best possible opportunity to get help on their very first contact. What does that mean practically?

• Provide each new contact center with some standard ways of handling customers’ requests so we can extend the brand seamlessly to all centers. 
• Provide enough information to all contact centers so they can redirect customers to the proper group if their requests are not within their power to resolve.
• Share as much information as possible about basic, common requests so they can be fulfilled in any contact center without having to refer customers to another center. For instance, if the customer needs help navigating to a particular area of the Website to accomplish a specific task, all contact centers should be able to provide that assistance on the spot, even if the customer is looking for a 10K form and the center’s specialty is not investor relations.

Gaining Efficiency

Beyond the benefits to the customer, we also expect the initiative to significantly increase the efficiencies of providing service to Cisco customers. This is a long-term project since there are so many different tools and vendors used today throughout Cisco, most of them with lengthy commitments yet to be worked through. We are starting now with three main deliverables.

1. A pre-selected list of vendors, targeting the best vendors in the most favorable locations. These vendors will be vetted, in most cases, through years of favorable interactions and we will share a set of standard contracting terms that allow all contact centers at Cisco to benefit from the most favorable pricing structure and prices.
2. A common set of contact center tools, ranging from telephony and case tracking to workforce management and quality monitoring. It is understood that not all contact centers will use all the tools since some are just too small for the more sophisticated kinds of tools. In some categories, there will be more than one choice, again to match the different sizes and requirements of the worldwide centers.   
3. A blueprint for new support centers that details steps to create a new center (or to improve an existing one) and guides the managers through all the resources we have amassed through collective experience from customer handling basics to selecting tools and vendors.

What’s Different About This Initiative?

Many support centers feel the need to standardize their processes, but this type of effort is usually accomplished under duress—after an acquisition, after reorganization or under severe financial pressure. Our strategy is different: we are building a new way to do business outside the usual pressure scenarios. This enables Cisco to make the changes at a measured pace.

Another common characteristic of standardization effort is to push the changes forcibly through the organization, often following a reorganization that brings the various centers together. In this case, Cisco is taking the opposite approach, being extremely careful to attract the various centers into using collaboration rather than trying to force them into compliance using command and control. This started at the top level, socializing the idea of the Contact Center Unification Framework with all the executives and asking key executives to serve as our sponsors throughout the organization. Then, we recruited a group of cross-functional contributors, mainly contact center managers, to participate in the different aspects of the initiative.  By getting the contact center managers involved, we are able to harvest innovative ideas, gain their trust and buy-in, and get their input in shaping this framework. 

Although the focus is very much on external customers, we want to extend the framework to all contact centers at Cisco, including those that serve employees and internal customers. The same economies of scale will be at work for internal customers. In addition, we will be able to improve Cisco’s employee experience and employee loyalty. 

Our approach was to develop an initial “playbook” of standards, governance and the engagement model that we will use. This “playbook” will set the stage for how contact centers operate using the framework and will be supplemented with a small services offering.  The services will help design new contact centers, optimize existing contact centers and align contact centers on a unified vendor strategy.  We also wanted to put the framework in practice by doing a proof of concept –testing the engagement model and the initial set of materials. Using the lessons learned on this pilot, we will improve the first draft of the framework and roll it out across Cisco.  At this time, the initiative ends, and the framework becomes a part of Cisco’s operations.  A cross-functional team, with a mix of dedicated and part-time resources, will work on managing the framework and will help existing contact centers migrate and adopt the framework.  Finally, this team will publish compliance reports to help promote adoption. 

We believe that the Contact Center Unification Framework will take Cisco into the next stage of the customer interaction evolution—from ease of access to ease of interaction. It will bring cost savings in the form of increase first contact resolution and automation.  It will help shift Cisco’s contact center culture from command and control to collaboration and teamwork. Most importantly, it will improve Cisco’s overall customer experience and reinforce the Cisco brand.

About the Authors…………………..………..………..…………..……..….. 

Ravi Ravishankhar is the Director of the Customer Interaction Network within the Customer Advocacy organization at Cisco.

Francoise Tourniaire is the founder and owner of FT Works, a consultancy firm that helps technology companies create and improve their support operations. You can find more information at www.ftworks.com or by calling 650 559 9826.