Ofcom Compliance Automated

Ultracomms have launched their answering machine detection solution AMD+.

The patent-pending cloud-based innovation in answering machine detection (AMD) is designed to increase contact centre agent productivity, with an average of 9% improvement identified in the company’s own research.

It can also reduce the call centre administration required in monitoring abandoned outbound calls, helping to simplify Ofcom compliance and reduce the risk of significant fines for companies breaching acceptable levels of abandoned or silent calls.

The new solution can also improve contact centre productivity by using advanced algorithms to exclude outbound calls when it recognises that an answering machine is present and, unlike traditional AMD technology, it is undetectable by agents and consumers.

28% reduction in answering machines presented to agents

Trials carried out with live customer contact centres found that customers are typically experiencing:

• 8.8% gain in agent productive time (in terms of talk time and ‘wrap-up’)
• 28% reduction in answering machines presented to agents

Indications show that the implementation has potential to improve agent morale, since a higher percentage of call recipients are reached first time.

Monitoring and administration is necessary with traditional AMD solutions

Traditional AMD solutions are based on terminating a phone call only when the system detects that there is no human response after the call has been answered. No matter how efficiently a supplier fine tunes its solution, there is inevitably a delay of a few of seconds at the beginning of every call – including calls answered by humans – while the technology is making its assessment.

Once the call is presented to the agent, the delay forces the customer to repeat his or her greeting to the connected agent, decreasing efficiency and the opportunity for a positive outcome on the call. Given the popularity of answer machines, the loss in agent productivity accumulates across the working week.

As these traditional AMD solutions are not always accurate, monitoring and administration is needed to ensure companies are within the levels of abandoned calls from ‘false positive’ detection deemed acceptable by Ofcom – who can now issue fines of up to £2 million to companies in breach of these rules.

As a result, many contact centres rejected previous AMD technologies as counterproductive in terms of the administration required to use them versus the benefits gained.

The solution has tackled the problem of answer machine detection with a new approach. Rather than attempting to remove all answerphones with an accepted level of inaccuracy, it only removes calls from being presented to agents when it is confident of the answerphone outcome.

In addition, the solution is designed to be undetectable to the agents and customers. The company has developed a set of data-mining algorithms, which, in combination with accuracy testing against historical data covering over one million calls, enables AMD+ to automatically identify and prevent calls where an answer machine is detected from being presented to agents.

For more information about Ultracomms, visit their website.