Analyst Perspectives

Envision is a vendor of workforce optimization software that I have been following for many years. It is rated a Hot vendor in our 2015 Workforce Optimization Value Index. It offers a full suite of products, including interaction capture, quality monitoring, workforce management, coaching and training, agent compensation management and workforce analytics. In an analysis last year I wrote about how, in an effort to make workforce optimization more accessible and affordable, it created an architecture optimized to run in the cloud. During a recent update, CEO and founder Rodney Kuhn said that the company continues to focus on the cloud while adding new capabilities, especially in interaction capture, agent evaluation and coaching, and analytics.

The on-premises and cloud-based versions are similar in functionality. Both capture calls, screen shoots, agent keystrokes and the flow between applications an agent uses to resolve a customer interaction. Point-and-click actions allow users to instantly review any call recording. New search capabilities enable users to search through range of data fields to find information, records of interactions and other sources of insight. Users can create customized agent evaluation forms, which once published can be used by anyone assigned to carry out evaluations. Evaluated interactions can be annotated and shared with agents to help identify areas for improvement. One feature I especially like is the capability to take clips from call recordings, Web pages or other documents and create a short video to show agents best practices and point out areas where they can improve. New analytics capabilities can analyze all captured data and present summaries of trending topics or words used during interactions, while showing which applications were opened at what time during an interaction and what fields were used within applications. This process shows how agents go about handling interactions, including when they use practices or unsatisfactory techniques.

In short, the Envision suite helps companies manage the people side of customer interactions. Also important is the close integration between the applications, which nearly half (48%) of participants in our research into next-generation workforce optimization said is very important. Integration enables companies to link processes that previously were disconnected because they were handled in discrete applications. The same research finds that  workforce optimization efforts are not far advanced: Only 13 percent of participants reach the highest Innovative level of performance. The research shows that the top reason holding back adoption is lack of budget, which some cloud-based systems such as Envision’s click2coachcloud can help to overcome by reducing upfront costs and the number of skilled resources required to implement and run the system.

Our workforce optimization benchmark research and Value Index show that the market is very competitive. They also show that companies have been relatively slow to adopt advanced systems, and even slower to adopt cloud-based systems, even though companies that have adopted such systems have realized a variety of benefits, particularly improved coaching (for 64%), increased customer satisfaction (52%) and more adoption of best practices (45%). I addition our research into the agent desktop and customer service finds a link between agent satisfaction and how well companies perform against key customer-related metrics; highly satisfied agents twice as often meet such targets. Envision’s products don’t include all the bells and whistles of some more established products, but their core capabilities, tight integration and availability in the cloud should put them on the list of companies evaluating potential vendors.

Regards,

Richard J. Snow

VP & Research Director