Call Center Solution

At the granular level, there are many differences between supporting in-store shopping compared to letting the customer make a purchase through a call center representative.

For example, retailers typically take different approaches to cost structures, sales techniques and inventory management in call centers compared with those in stores. However, the fundamental sales processes are the same. Call center operators must be able to do the following:

• Perform SKU lookup (This process is usually different from that in a store because call centers do not scan merchandise but rather look up products for users based on catalog numbers or customer descriptions of products.)
• Adjust orders, including price overrides and other adjustments, based on appropriate authorization levels
• Look up and apply relevant tax rates and shipping costs
• Enter detailed customer information, including shipping and billing information
• Finalize the order by gathering and processing payment information
• Keep track of order information, including possible commissions
• Manage inventory for the call center

Just like in stores, the order system isn't the only business process that a retailer needs to manage. For instance, call centers often have phone banks along with software that monitors queues and provides operational information to evaluate the overall call center as well as the performance of individual associates. However, as in the store environment, these processes are external to the actual sale. In fact, these features are often handled by third-party software that is not part of the primary order capturing system. Call centers were traditionally used to take orders and to address customer service issues. However, retailers that have retooled traditional call centers into sales centers have seen significant growth in revenue per call.

CrossView Call Center is based on IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce software, which uses the underlying data and business logic from WebSphere Commerce software to help retailers manage call center operations. CrossView Call Center can seamlessly interact with all of the other channels in CrossView and includes the following capabilities:

• Helps increase sales by enabling sales associates to view cross-selling and promotional information and to create quotes and turn them into orders
• Enables associates to manage the entire sales process, including providing them with the ability to create, update and cancel orders and to process payments
• Improves customer service by enabling associates to view and take control of customer shopping carts and to override contract and list pricing based on authorization levels