Success Stories

Implemented in Weeks, ROI in Months

Cicero has been deployed on more than 50,000 desktops from Fortune 500 financial services companies such as Merrill Lynch to outsourced contact centers. Here is a snapshot of some of the results of using Cicero:

  • A Major Call Center Outsourcer reduced Average Handle Time (AHT) by approximately 10 percent resulting in savings of one million dollars per year
  • A Major Hardware and Services Company reduced the time needed to prepare sales opportunity data from 15 minutes to 4 minutes
  • A Major Travel Services Company shortened the reservation process by 15 percent
  • A Local Enforcement Agency reduced the time needed to prepare an arrest packet from 20 minutes to 5 minutes
  • A Major Financial Services Company reduced AHT by an average of 13 percent

N.E.W. Customer Service Companies, Inc.

N.E.W. is a contact center service provider specializing in extended service plans on electronic products for large corporations. N.E.W. implemented Cicero to integrate their customer applications, streamline processes, and improve average handle time. The project included:

  • Approximately 1000 agents in 4 contact centers
  • Pre-Cicero Average Handle Time: 556 seconds
  • 8 applications including Siebel 7.1
  • The existing applications not integrated with customer data spread over multiple systems.
  • CTI was only integrated to Siebel
  • 8 average redundant account number entries per call.

After seven weeks of gathering requirements, creating an integrated desktop, testing, and deploying a solution, Cicero

  • Reduced Average Handle Time to 513 seconds or an average reduction of 43 seconds
  • Provided an estimated savings of $1,290,000 in the first year with an ROI within 6 months
  • Allowed all applications to be screen popped
  • Trained the N.E.W. support staff how to use Cicero so they could modify their integrated desktop.
  • Reduced training time and increased agent satisfaction
  • Reduced redundant data entry
  • Improved Error Handling by capturing application errors internally and sending them to a support group via a Web Service
  • Improved IT support in outsourcing environment by detecting changes to applications and the environment and notifying a support group of potential problems.

Fortune 500 Financial Services Company

A diversified Fortune 500 financial services and insurance provider, with customers in the US and abroad, acquired numerous contact centers through mergers and acquisitions over several years. These contact centers were organized by specialty, geography, type of customer relationship, and product offerings. After a careful review and evaluation process, the IT and Business Unit executives decided to deploy Cicero technology broadly across the various contact centers. Each business would use Cicero to solve its unique cross-platform and cross-application integration problems. The results included the following:

  • Training. Three groups (Producer, Issues Resolution, and Brokerage) within the call centers cut training and turnover costs between 40 – 60%.
  • Compliance. The Company uses Siebel to record ‘reason-for-call’ information. Before Cicero, each agent was expected to record that information in the Siebel application. Compliance was less than 10%. With Cicero, this data is now automatically extracted through the agent’s work processes and entered into Siebel.
  • Productivity. The call centers provided a 10%+ increase in productivity within the first 6 months, allowing agents to handle substantial customer growth with no increase in headcount.
  • Savings. The Cicero solution produced annual savings well above the 10%+ target. The cumulative effects of reduced talk time and lower wait times have had a net positive impact on the customers, employees and external producers. This has lead to a net savings nearing $1.2 million annually
  • Extraordinarily fast results. The customer satisfaction metrics improved substantially and target ROI measures were reached within the first 6 months.