Unified contact centre solutions

Unified communications (UC) is currently one of the most hyped subjects in the contact centre space, and if you believe some of the articles written about it you would think it is about to revolutionise the whole way centres work.  We asked our panel about how unified communications can improve the contact centre. Sadly I don’t think that all of the hype is quite true.

My research shows that many, many companies have a traditional TDM voice network and a separate data network and their budgets just don’t allow them to change radically. Of those who can afford it, several have either transitioned to a single VoIP network, or they have extended their facility by supplementing their existing infrastructure with VoIP, for example, to create another site.

During the five years I have been covering the contact centre space, I have seen deployment of VoIP-based centres increase from about 30% to just over 50%.  But the details in my research show that even this growth hides a sorry story – companies deploy VoIP simply to save on communication costs.  Most don’t look beyond these cost savings so are missing out on the additional benefits that a full functional VoIP-based centre could deliver. UC is predicated on having VoIP deployed and then builds from there by taking advantage of what is called presence and collaboration.

Single network for voice and data

The base for UC is having a single VoIP network that supports both voice and data over a single network. In theory this allows all sorts of fancy functionality such as different device types talking to each other, voice-to-text conversion, online directories, etc. In practice most companies use it to save telecommunications costs by routing calls, for free, over the data network.

Apart from saving on telecommunications costs (always a big plus for most centre mangers), as I see it, UC can help support the virtualisation of centres and streamlining call hand-off. It is not uncommon for companies to have a combination of more than one centre, calls being handled by knowledge workers outside the formal contact centre, and increasingly having home-based agents. The simple fact that these can all be supported on a single network makes the task of managing these resources much easier, which in itself will deliver performance improvements.

Presence

Presence may sound quite impressive but in reality it is the simple ability to recognise who is logged into the network, in much the same way that Skype (a VoIP-based service) allows users to see which of their contacts is online.

Presence excels where companies have calls handled outside their formal centre. Within a centre agents are typically logged onto the network, or contact centre management software, and so most companies can tell which agents are logged in and what they are doing – idle waiting to take a call, on a call, completing after-call work, away from their desk, etc. So if an agent cannot resolve a caller’s issue and needs to hand off a call to another agent or supervisor, they can tell who is available. Presence extends this functionality across the enterprise, so, for example, if an agent cannot resolve a customer issue they can quickly search for an expert – knowledge worker – that is present anywhere on the network. If the expert is ready and able then the agent can transfer the call with the minimum of effort. This in itself can help first-call resolution rates, as hopefully the expert can resolve the issue.