The path to intelligent communications

In the past, the call centre was seen as a separate department to the business; it operated differently, it had a different culture of staff, it even had its own IT department and infrastructure.

This autonomy led to the call centre running a host of disparate systems and hardware platforms, which could not integrate with the rest of the business. The end result was the duplication of numerous processes, systems, as well as business inefficiencies and the inability to effectively report on the benefit of the call centre to the business.

With the rise of technology in business as a means to effectively monitor, weigh and even report on each division at the most granular level, as well as heightened emphasis on customer service and retention, the call centre has had to shift into the business and be accounted for like all other divisions.

Enter Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and the advent of the contact centre. With the call centre stepping aside for the contact centre, and the contact centre's ability to touch customers anywhere, no matter how, IP telephony has become a quintessential element of the operation.

The embracing of intelligent communications enables a business to leverage all of its resources for improved customer service.

Leslie Forsman, business development manager at Avaya Sub-Saharan Africa

Managers who understand the benefits of resource optimisation also understand the benefits of IP. When embedding IP into the contact centre operation, one can make better use of enterprise resources and at the same time consolidate a number of systems previously reserved exclusively for the call centre department.

Today, an IP contact centre deploys sophisticated applications and uses enterprise resources, both technical and human.

But the real benefits of IP in the contact centre come in when an organisation empowers agents and users through the use of applications that intelligently respond to client demands. For example, branch or remote sites can provide seamless global coverage and respond to spikes in call volume, all through a connection to the central hub. IP telephony enables the call centre and supports the use of agents from anywhere, including their homes. This capability has become a cost control strategy for many global contact centres.

Looking beyond just pure IP in the contact centre, companies must embrace the integration of customer service back into the functions and business processes of the enterprise.

Enter intelligent communications, which is the embedding of communications into the most granular level of the business, its strategy, and ultimately its bottom line.

The embracing of intelligent communications enables a business to leverage all of its resources for improved customer service, by being able to monitor and measure the impact and bearing that events in the contact centre are having on the entire organisation.

For example, a business event, such as a manufacturing delay, can trigger a communications event in the contact centre such as an outbound call to customers who have the item on order.

By embedding the contact centre, through integration, into the heart of the business process, companies can start using intelligent communications to better understand customers, drive more niche call-based campaigns, map efforts back to the bottom line, and more importantly understand the success of each campaign.

For those contact centre managers looking for ways to improve operations, IP telephony (IPT) offers many advantages over what traditional circuit switching technology can offer to a call centre. IPT can enable several operating models and ultimately lead to a contact centre based on intelligent communications.

IPT is just that, a software-based technology that uses voice over IP to transmit voice over a data network. IPT enables companies to find new levels of productivity, efficiency and cost savings by consolidating business communications systems, unifying and extending multimedia applications to workers anywhere.

The Miami Dade Fire Rescue recently deployed an IPT solution and reported the following results:

* More productive internal collaboration yielded a five-year net benefit of $232 000, driven by avoidance of internal administrative charges and reductions in phone lines.
* Faster linkage of people, processes and resources enhanced call processing features extended to dozens of fire stations over economical IP connections.
* More agile, secure and reliable operations improved reliability provided to key emergency facilities through use of redundant processor technology and backup network connections.
* An annual ROI of 25% and a payback period of three years, nine months.

Customers who understand the benefits of IP in the contact centre also understand that by embedding real-time communications capabilities in business applications and processes using IPT, they will be able to offer new models for businesses with significant impact for customer service, revenue generation and business continuity. All of which are done with a single view of the customer and the enterprise.