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  The Contact Center as an "Enterprise Application"
 
The typical contact center manager's attention is undivided in his/her focus on improving customer service and lowering operating costs. Those fundamentals may now point to a new choice when purchasing an automatic call distributor (ACD). Momentum is building in favor of Internet-protocol (IP)-based systems that offer compelling advantages over traditional circuit-based ACD switches.

The Contact Center as an "Enterprise Application"
Most companies operate multiple medium-sized contact centers as opposed to large centralized single-site centers so they can more readily access skilled or lower-cost workforces, satisfy follow-the-sun business hours coverage and assure business continuity. Corporate mergers and acquisitions also increase the number of these geographically dispersed centers.

The degree to which customer contact centers are connected via a network determines efficiencies in operation, cost reductions, and levels of customer service. Ideally, a network of multiple systems can be operated and managed as a single large contact center providing real-time visibility and control on activity across the entire network of centers.

Creating one networked, centralized contact center allows businesses to improve the bottom line and customer service by:
 routing customers to the best agent available regardless of where the agent is located
 shortening the hold times for customers by load balancing contact volumes across the entire enterprise
 increasing the efficiencies in operation, cost reductions and levels of customer service
 providing real-time visibility and control on activity across the network of centers

How can a company with a multi-site environment move to a single system? An IP-based contact center system can replace traditional ACDs to offer compelling advantages. By transforming the contact center from a point solution to an enterprise software application, companies can eliminate the high cost and complexities of computer telephony integration (CTI), reduce telephony charges and create a single point of management for all centers on the corporate network.

Contact Center Architectures
The contact center manager has several options when choosing an ACD for a multi-site environment. First, legacy circuit-based ACD switches can be front-ended with pre-routers. The advantage with this hybrid approach is that the investment in legacy ACDs can be leveraged. However, this approach dramatically increases system management requirements and the integration complexity and costs, while still relying on both the telephony and corporate data networks.

A second option is another hybrid approach that ties dispersed circuit-based ACDs together via IP, rather than telephony tie-lines. This hybrid is not a total IP solution since the IP connections are between the switches only and telephony lines are still required from each switch to agent sets. This, of course, does not eliminate the two networks, but does reduce telephony charges.

A third option is a centralized, total IP-based ACD solution. This option reduces system and network operating costs and telephony service charges as well as simplifies the distribution of multi-media contacts. The disadvantage is that today's solutions may not scale to a sufficient size because of limitations with centralized processing architectures.

The fourth option is a total IP-based system with a distributed architecture. This relatively new enterprise architecture offers all the advantages of traditional ACDs and the centralized IP-based systems, but is scalable, more reliable, and has a lower cost of ownership.

A Silver Bullet for Multi-media Contact Handling Although voice calls are still the most popular means of contacting a company, customers in growing numbers are choosing to do business by email or web collaboration. In recent years, companies have struggled to add email and web sessions while maintaining a high level of service.

Today, most contact centers distribute and prioritize incoming contacts based on the media channel?voice, web or email. With this "media-centric" segregation, phone calls or web chat sessions receive immediate attention, while emails, voice messages and faxes are deferred for hours. This customer service model is flawed since systems do not allow for escalation across media channels. As an example, a contact center manager should have the ability to prioritize a gold customer's email over emails and phone calls from silver customers.

The contact center manager has three choices for handling multiple media types. First, and most common, the manager can operate separate centers dedicated to handling a single media type. The result is multiple centers with a duplicate infrastructure, no consolidated management reports and an inability to maximize agent productivity by cross-training agents to handle multiple media types.

The second option is to integrate applications over two networks. This approach proves difficult when companies attempt to integrate the three media channels, challenging companies to control the complexity and cost; assure consistent handling of multiple media applications at the agent desktop; and generate accurate consolidated reporting on service levels by media type. This option also requires separate workflow routines for each media channel and separate databases to track contacts. The addition of a datamart to consolidate historical data for reports adds expense and management burden.

A silver bullet to the multi-media problem may be option three: to distribute all contact types over one IP network. This approach allows contacts to be distributed as efficiently as voice calls have been distributed in the past and blended at the agent desktop. It allows emails and web sessions to be prioritized based on business rules and the value of the customer to the company regardless of the media type. It provides for consolidated reports across all media types and reduces the cost of managing a system by eliminating the high cost and complexity of traditional CTI implementations, and the need for multiple workflows and databases.

Mission-Critical Performance on One Network The high costs of managing two networks (voice and data) and developing CTI applications for multiple media types will provide additional incentive to move to a single network solution. When considering a contact center application based on a single IP contact distribution system, contact center managers must focus on two additional issues -- reliability and voice quality.

 Reliability: Contact center managers expect the same mission-critical levels of system reliability with an IP-based solution as with traditional ACD systems. The latest generation of systems, based on distributed IP architectures, provide the best solutions for achieving the levels of reliability demanded. In fact, the industry-accepted metric of five 9s may be an outdated concept since IP-based systems with distributed architectures are redefining the metrics used to measure system performance with no contacts lost. By virtue of its distributed design, these systems provide built-in redundancy of components. They use reliable, off-the-shelf server components and provide automatic call redirect in the event that a node on the network is out of service.

 Voice Quality: On the issue of voice quality, voice over IP (VoIP) has quelled any lingering doubt -- IP-based systems now reliably provide toll-quality voice performance over a managed corporate network. That said, there is confusion still between VoIP and the early applications for Voice over the Internet where network bandwidth cannot be controlled and which does provide toll-quality voice. Voice over the Internet provides less than acceptable voice quality for the call center. The remaining challenge is for system providers to educate call center management on the distinctions between VoIP versus Voice over the Internet. To further assure voice quality, the latest systems use compression algorithms that favor higher quality of service. At the desktop, operating systems such as Windows XP prioritize for voice versus data transactions and USB headsets provide full digital sound quality.

Are Traditional ACDs Obsolete? For all the reasons stated, the traditional ACD circuit-based contact centers may be on the way out. The advantages of the latest IP-based, intelligent contact distribution systems are too compelling. The real question is not 'should I purchase an IP-based system?' but rather, 'which IP-based system should I purchase?' The latest generation systems with distributed architectures may finally unify the contact center as an enterprise application for managing multiple sites and media types.