Sales Improvement a Reality for T-Com Slovak after Knowlagent Solutions Launch

By Susan J. Campbell

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Yesterday, TMC covered enhancements that Knowlagent had announced for its r8 offering and what it can do to improve the frontline for the contact center. Today, the company, along with its European Joint-venture partner Odhinn Europe, has announced the roll-out of Knowlagent Solutions to all call center agents at T-Com Slovak to improve sales and customer service performance.

The T-Com Slovak deployment is a result of a successful “dual-pilot” that proved sales and revenues could effectively be increased by a minimum of 15 percent in seven weeks among two agent groups serving inbound customers and outbound sales agents.

According to Jeroen Hollestelle, managing director of T-Com Slovak’s Call Service o.z., the goal of the pilot was to determine without doubt if Knowlagent could help increase the sales and revenue performance of the company’s call center agents and improve operational efficiency.



Hollestelle noted that they measured the performance of a group of agents using Knowlagent learning modules over a seven week period and compared their results against a similar sized control group. The results were undisputed and T-Com Slovak decided to deploy Knowlagent Solutions immediately.

The T-Com Slovak pilot resulted in the combined agent sales increase of an average 27 percent, much higher than the company anticipated. Knowlagent increased agent commitment to T-Com Slovak’s goals to boost sales and provide excellent customer service by sending discrete pieces of training to the agent desktop and providing improved performance tools.

Knowlagent views the pilot’s success as proof of its ability to deliver personalized real-time performance training during contact center agent downtimes, without an adverse affect on operational metrics. Through the improved solutions, customers were provided with new capabilities based on the same patented technologies, processes and best practices as Knowlagent r8. The solutions can be implemented in any combination and in any order.

Hollestelle continued that the preparations and implementation were completed in less than seven weeks. The teams from the two companies worked together as true partners to achieve the desired results. During that time, Odhinn built 42 learning modules for the two pilot groups, installed Knowlagent Solutions and integrated into T-Com Slovak’s Avaya (News - Alert) switch. This know-how is now being transferred to T-Com Slovak agents so that the company can continue to generate excellent results.

T-Com Slovak also anticipates a quick return on investment in Knowlagent Solutions within six months. The company is confident that Knowlagent Solutions will help to increase call center revenue and sales growth in the future.

Call center leaders are consistently seeking new ways to improve performance while also keeping costs under control. This can often be a difficult balancing match, ensuring that one side does not suffer in attempt to advance the other.

Knowlagent does provide solutions that respond to a direct and sometimes ignored need of the call center. While significant attention has been paid to training and coaching call center agents, the fact of the matter is that this is one area that is lacking throughout the industry. As a result, attrition continues to remain high and customer service is not at the levels that it could be. Further attention to solutions like that Knowlagent could present a significant improvement option for call centers around the world.

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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.