Using ANI and the gains

[zoinks]

So what's the deal around ANI?

Who's using it?
How are you using it?
What does it gain you?
Is it worth it?

We have been tossing it around for a while and have enabled it, disabled it, put it here and there. Now we're looking at enabling it again on all our incoming trunks. We're a retail organization that handles 22 million calls a year so the cost can get up there.

So.....what does everyone think?

[mdbabb]

ANI can be a good tool for a number of reasons. We've found that it is a helpful tool in researching member complaints and trouble issues in a cradle to grave search tool (we use NICE Analyzer) or call recording (NICE CLS). It's also helpful in cost reduction strategies. For example, if you are utilizing call centers in different areas of the country, you can determine the region that your callers are calling from and route call volume on a carrier level using point of origination, thus reducing costs through routing calls to the right center rather than routing it for back end service. (For example, if you have a center in Texas and a center in NY, you could route your southwestern US callers to Texas and your NY callers to NY, and staffing approriately. (For marketing reasons, this may also be helpful for cultural identification reasons. Southerners don't really relate as well to Northern US accents and vice versa.)

This could also be used for market studies to determine if certain promotions have better response in certain regions.

We also utilize ANI for CTI in order to provide our agents with screen pops as much as possible, even in the caller does not enter their identifying information. This may not be applicable in a retail environment, however, since I understand many retail organizations do not always have business needs for a CTI application.

[Frank A. Engle]

mdbabb did a great job of covering many of the primary reasons to use ANI.

A few others for retail applications are:

- Secondary security "password" for retail credit card account access, in other words, client must be calling from home telephone in order to access normal account security procedures

- Customized on hold messages advertising specials based on previous buying habits.

- ANI works extremely well with IVR applications and can automatically track account activity within the IVR

- ANI provides a good callback number for abandoned calls or for outbound telemarketing. An example would be a retailer that sets up a "hotline" for a particular product promotion. The next time a similar product is promoted, the retailer can use the ANI number to provide an automated "courtesy" call to the customer advising them of the new special promotion.

You are right on target in asking "Is it worth it?" It may be a good idea to do a simple ROI every time you are thinking about implementing ANI on a group of incoming lines and/or run a few tests to get some solid revenue generating or expense cutting numbers justifying the cost.

Needless to say, there are many other ways ANI can help your organization based on your unique customer service, sales and marketing culture and strategy.

Hope this helps...Good Luck!