South African contact centres are increasingly adopting IP telephony, as the telecommunications market becomes more competitive and bandwidth becomes cheaper and more accessible.
According to Brian Tarr, managing executive of Business Connexion`s Networks Competency, voice over IP (VOIP) and Web technologies have a lot to offer contact centres, provided their implementation is astutely managed.
"Centralised voice services, which allow for better management and control, are an obvious benefit of IP telephony for enterprise. There is also the reduction of costs and the ability to be carrier independent. Most important, however, are the numerous innovative ways to converge and collaborate over an IP platform," he says.
According to Tarr, IP telephony (IPT) brings with it inventive ways to introduce mobility and converged mobility, which combines fixed line, Wifi, and mobile. He adds that some of the extended services are going into the hosted models of IP PBX and IP contact centres. "The effect of this on business and what it means for Capex as opposed to Opex is generating interest," he says.
The benefits of an IP-based infrastructure do not end here. IP contact centres simplify the management of multiple automatic call distribution systems (ACDS) and enable the enterprise to manage all contact centres from a central point. They also eliminate the need for multiple copies of the same applications, because the central node provides all application functionality - including workforce management, recording, and quality assurance and coaching.
"This includes a central point for multimedia and performance management, and reduces software licensing and maintenance fees," Tarr says.
IP contact centres can also provide technology to branch and satellite offices and remote and home agents cost-effectively; optimise the usage of agents throughout the network; and route calls and transactions to the most appropriate agent in the network. They provide a single, unified view of a contact centre operation and enable the agent to standardise on service quality.
Tarr points out that the cost implications of IP-based contact centres are largely favourable: "Firstly, the costs of network management and carriers are reduced. Secondly, hardware and software costs are reduced through the centralisation of technology and applications. Finally, agents can be deployed in areas where labour and infrastructure costs are less than in major cities," he says.
Despite this, Tarr says there are challenges facing IP adopters; most notably the cost of bandwidth and the security issues associated with Web technologies.
"An IP-based infrastructure is a major capital investment, and companies must strategise accordingly. Having a telephony infrastructure that is part of the data network necessitates ensuring high-quality of voice, as well as good security and backup facilities. This, in turn, requires a major shift in the way voice communications are managed. If implementation of an IP-based infrastructure is not properly managed there will be budget overruns," he says.
Tarr adds that as integrated parts of the enterprise data infrastructure, IP telephony and IP contact centres will have to comply with certain ideas around security, and with security implementations.
"Securing operation, administration and management will lead to better account management, as well as secure event logging, operations, remote access, and customisable log-in banners. This will require the effective design and implementation of firewalls, network IDs, virtual LANS (VLANS), secure client and server platforms, and protection from denial of service (DOS) attacks," he concludes.
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