Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

For the past several days, we've been asking questions of Eyal Rudnik from NICE Systems, the maker
of the NICE SmartCenter, but we haven't talked about what the NICE SmartCenter is.

How does NICE SmartCenter work? When the phone rings, what happens then? How does the information get stored and communicated with management?

SmartCenter is working even before the phone rings. With NICE SmartCenter, contact center management has the ability to ensure that the right number of agents with the right skills set will be available to take calls and be able to answer any questions that a customer may have. What makes SmartCenter a powerful tool is that fact that it can be adjusted to support any business needs and accordingly there will be a different productivity flow. For example, with today’s business dynamic, competition is an even bigger challenge than in the past. New campaigns and offerings are changing on a daily basis.

 In order to tackle a business issue, such as how to be more effective against competition, one way to deploy the SmartCenter solution would be:
1.The SmartCenter solution will use Multi-Dimensional Interaction analytics to detect calls in which a competitor name was mentioned. SmartCenter can distinguish between the “agent side” of a conversation and the customer side. We allow our customers to be very precise and look for the interactions in which a competitor’s name was mentioned by the customer.
2.As it is likely that competitors’ names are frequently mentioned, SmartCenter allows the user to set thresholds for the percentage of calls in which competitors were mentioned. The threshold can be set based on call record history, and can also be adjusted on the fly.
3.Once the percentage of calls in which competitors were mentioned exceeds the threshold, an alarm will be triggered.
4.The alert will be reviewed by a marketing analyst who will be able to understand why a certain competitor is being mentioned, and will have the ability to create a specific coaching package that will articulate the benefits over the competition. Also, a modification to an existing offer or deal may be considered. 
5.The coaching package will be automatically scheduled to be reviewed by the targeted agent.
6.A real-time automated coaching assistant will be added to aide an agent during calls, thus allowing the agent to have access to all the relevant information in order to compete effectively during the call, e.g. a comparison between two competing offers.

Further reading: NICE User Group and Call Center Demo