Products & Solutions / Contact Center Planning and Optimization

SAS® Contact Center Planning and Optimization

Lower contact center costs while improving customer satisfaction and retention

Use the strength and expertise of SAS Business Analytics to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction and retention. We enable you to better predict service volume, optimize staffing and identify drivers of customer behavior, service demand and performance.

Benefits

  • Improved customer satisfaction.
  • Reduced service costs.
  • Increased operational efficiency.
  • Increased productivity.
  • Proactive issue response.

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Features

  • Contact center foundation data mart.
  • Forecasting workbench.
  • Staff optimization workbench.
  • Analytic workbench.
  • Early-warning/alert mechanism.
  • Prebuilt business analysis reporting.

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" The use of business analytics on contact center interactions enables management to extract critical business insight that would otherwise be lost."

— The Aberdeen Group

Contact Center Analytics:
Better Interactions, Happier Customers
October 2011


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Executive Home Workspace


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How SAS® Is Different

  • Market-leading functionality with an unmatched, end-to-end integrated platform.
  • A modular, open architecture that is platform- and data-source-neutral and can work in any mixed-system environment.
  • Proven analytical technology uses integrated, modular workbenches with market-leading SAS functionality, including forecasting and staff optimization.
  • Users can manage the analytical process without reliance on IT.

Benefits

  • Improved customer satisfaction.
    • A comprehensive view of the transaction/contact environment.
    • Integrated analytical capabilities to quickly and precisely identify drivers that affect customer satisfaction.
    • Insights to help design better treatment strategies.
  • Reduced service costs.
    • More advanced and efficient forecasting and predictive capabilities integrated with advanced staff optimization capabilities.
    • Improved tactical and strategic planning.
    • An appropriate mix of personnel meets demand at reduced costs.
  • Increased operational efficiency.
    • Fully integrated staff optimization more accurately aligns the appropriate staff skills.
    • Better forecasting to meet predicted consumer demand.
    • More likely to get the right call to the right agent at the right time.
  • Increased productivity.
    • A fully integrated analytic workbench that provides data analysis tools to identify the factors that impede first contact resolution.
    • Improved operational decision-making processes, leading to improved productivity.
  • Proactive issue response.
    • Analytically driven early-warning capabilities to identify pending issues that affect service.
    • Proactive resolutions that help mitigate the effects of service issues to customers.
    • Prompt responses that protect brand image and market share.

Features

Contact center foundation data mart.
  • Logical data model.
  • Prebuilt ETL processes supporting downstream application modules.
  • Star schema data mart engineered to support multiple industries.
  • Information repository supports inbound, outbound and blended environments for all forms of content.
Forecasting workbench.
  • Short-term, long-term and ad hoc forecasting.
  • Strategic and tactical planning.
  • Event planning integration.
Staff optimization workbench.
  • Long-term and short-term staff modeling strategy.
  • Industry-leading optimization methodology.
  • Skills-based demand assignment for staffing.
  • What-if scenario analysis.
  • Constraint management.
Analytic workbench.
  • Customer behavior analysis and agent performance analysis that incorporates cost factors.
  • Support for ad hoc data mining projects.
  • Predictive model development support.
Early-warning/alert mechanism.
  • Configurable, parameter-defined alerts.
  • Operational analytics for early warning.
  • Forecast-to-actual deviation alerts.
Prebuilt business analysis reporting.
  • Prebuilt OLAP reports (performance analysis).
  • Predefined measures (KPIs and metrics).
  • FLEX UI.

Screenshots

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Executive Home Workspace

The executive home workspace provides enterprise views of the "pulse" of the contact center operation. Current demand in relation to predicted demand, prominent performance measures and alerts/early warnings support business leader assessments of operational viability.

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Forecast Workspace

The forecast workspace enables demand planning analysts in strategic and tactical planning activities. Ad hoc analysis empowers analysts with real-time investigation of demand drivers.

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Optimization Workspace

The optimization workspace provides advanced analytic techniques for optimizing supply resource allocation to meet service volume demand at the skill level, ensuring the right customer gets the right agent at the right time and reducing operations expense.

View Screenshot

System Requirements

Host Platforms/Server Tier
  • HP/UX on Itanium: 11iv3 (11.31)
  • HP/UX on PA-RISC: 11iv3 (11.31)
  • IBM AIX on POWER architectures: 6.1 and 7.1
  • IBM z/OS: V1R10 and higher
  • Linux (32-bit): Novell SuSE 10 and 11; RHEL 5 and 6
  • Linux x64 (64-bit): Novell SuSE 10 and 11; RHEL 5 and 6; Oracle Linux 5.5 and 6
  • Microsoft Windows (32-bit): Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista *, Windows 7**, Windows Server 2003 family, Windows Server 2008 family
  • Microsoft Windows on x64 (64-bit): Windows XP Professional for x64, Windows Vista* for x64, Windows 7** for x64, Windows Server 2003 family for x64, Windows Server 2008 family for x64
  • Solaris on SPARC: Version 10 Update 8
  • Solaris on x64 (x64-86): Version 10 Update 8

Client environment

Client Tier - SAS Contact Center Planning and Optimization:

  • Windows
  • Microsoft Windows for x64

Client Tier - SAS® Enterprise Miner TM and SAS Text Miner Personal Client:

  • Windows
  • Microsoft Windows for x64

Client Tier - SAS Enterprise Miner and SAS Text Miner Thin Clients:

  • Windows
  • Microsoft Windows for x64

Server environment

Server Tier - SAS Contact Center Planning and Optimization:

  • HP-UX IPF
  • Linux for x64
  • 64-bit enabled AIX
  • 64-bit enabled Solaris
  • Solaris for x64
  • Microsoft Windows for x64

Server Tier - SAS Metadata Server

  • 64-bit enabled HP UX
  • HP UX IPF
  • Linux for x64
  • Linux
  • z/OS
  • 64-bit enabled AIX
  • 64-bit enabled Solaris
  • Solaris for x64
  • Microsoft Windows for x64
  • z/OS 64-bit

Middle Tier - SAS Contact Center Planning and Optimization:

  • HP-UX IPF
  • Linux for x64
  • 64-bit enabled AIX
  • 64-bit enabled Solaris
  • Solaris for x64
  • Microsoft Windows for x64

Required/optional software

Required:

  • Base SAS 9.3

SAS Contact Center Planning and Optimization is a browser-based solution incorporating Flash technology, requiring:

  • IE v7 - v9
  • Adobe Flash 10.1

Ready to learn more?

Call us at 1-800-727-0025 (US and Canada) or request more information.