Staying ahead of the pack - Contact Management

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Unified Communications Integrating UC technologies with legacy systems This article helps contact centre executives understand business, technology and personnel considerations for successfully integrating unified communications (UC) services in a contact centre with legacy systems. It addresses: business and technology factors driving greater integration of UC services with legacy contact centre systems; strategies to ensure seamless integration of UC services; and benefits to the contract centre of integrating UC services. BY PAUL ADAMS Unified Communications (UC) continues to emerge as an invaluable customer relationship management tool in contact centres for its ability to more quickly link internal experts and knowledge workers with agents, drive efficiencies through collaboration, empower agents that are homebased, remote or equipped with mobile devices, and improve the customer experience. Interest among organizations has also been accelerated by the shift from premise-based UC solutions in the contact centre to hosted UC, which can deliver more dramatic cost savings, new service options for organizations that could not previously afford or support UC services, and better business continuity in the event of downtime. To benefit from contact centre unified communications, however, requires full and more seamless integration of UC services such as unified messaging, video, presence & IM, enhanced automatic call distribution (ACD) with legacy contact centre systems. Factors driving integration of contact centre UC services There are key market, business and technology factors driving greater demand among enterprises for unified communications in the contact centre in a way that is fully integrated with voice capabilities and legacy systems. • Shift from premise-based to hosted UC solutions – Enterprises now have access to on-demand UC features as a “service,” as opposed to a premise-based solution that requires on-site installation, operation and management of UC products. Hosted UC in the contact centre makes unified communications available and affordable for a broader range of organizations, and can be more seamlessly – and cost effectively – integrated with legacy contact centre systems. • Increased focus on customer satisfaction – Customer expectations for the contact centre experience continue to rise, which means that organizations are hyper-conscious of customer satisfaction given the brand damage a customer can video presence wreak via online sites and social networks. The legacy voice system experience of long hold times, dropped calls and automated routing black holes are all fodder for customer dissatisfaction, and organizations are seeking scalable, affordable and flexible ways to create more rewarding customer experiences. • Need for consistent customer experience – Unified communications are, in a way, about unifying the customer experience. As the number of possible customer touch points expands to mobile devices, instant messaging Unified Communications ACD social networks, video and chat, organizations are recognizing the need to ensure that a customer’s experience remains consistent and effective. • Drive to improve contact centre efficiencies – Contact centres are relentlessly driven to increase agent efficiency, lower costs, and increase customer satisfaction – and balance these competing objectives appropriately. The introduction of an IP-based architecture and growth in innovative Web-based applications enabled via the IP network now allow contact centre agents to address the core objectives in ways that were never possible with simple legacy ACD platforms. Strategies to ensure seamless integration of UC services Ensuring successful integration of UC with legacy contact centre systems requires that organizations first recognize associated challenges, as well as strategies that can be employed to ensure the process is seamless. Key challenges include: email cellphone 16 contact management.ca March / April 2011
Unified Communications legacy investments, cost of UC adoption, and resistance to change workflows. Many enterprise contact centres remain saddled with aging and cumbersome legacy systems (PBXs, IVRs, etc.) – investments of significance that can’t simply be tossed aside. As a result, integration of UC must be mindful of leveraging these investments to minimize sunk costs and maximize productivity benefits UC can deliver. Contact centres are cost sensitive, and as a result the ROI must be clear before investing resources on new technologies. Premise-based ACD platforms have been adding UC capabilities, but at a fairly steep cost, so enterprise customers have been slow to adopt them. Hosted UC solutions can lower overall costs, but certainly do require an investment on the part of the enterprise. Contact centres are fast-paced environments designed around efficient use of a high-turnover workforce. That means when something works, you try not to change it. New UC tools can greatly increase productivity, but will change the ‘normal’ workflow, so enterprises should introduce these new tools while remaining mindful of the broader impact. With these challenges in mind, there are strategies enterprises should consider prior to integrating UC with legacy contact centre systems. Strategies to consider include the following. Understand required workflow modifications Call centres are designed around efficient call handling: how queued calls are handled, how calls are distributed to available agents, how calls are handled/overflow during peak hours, etc. Bottom line is the call flows used with legacy systems were designed to work with the legacy technology. They were designed around the concept of multiple trunks into the ACD platform where they were queued and distributed to agents when they became available, with overflow routes that would re-route the call to a new site or platform when necessary. The workflow must be modified to leverage the capabilities of the new ACD service. Hosted ACD services, on the other hand, handle call queuing and routing in the network, and allow for fundamental changes in the call flows. As a result, the most important consideration with a migration to a hosted service is evaluating the basic call flows and adapting them to leverage the routing capabilities of an IP-based network, with network-based queuing and ‘virtual queues’ that can include agents from any location. Simplify workflow A key UC business driver in the contact centre is the ability to provide agents with immediate access to subject matter experts and information throughout the organization. To ensure this information becomes an asset – rather than a liability – to the agent, contact centre executives must be sensitive to not overload agents with too much information. Efficient contact centres are built around a very structured workflow, which ensures callers get a ‘consistent’ positive experience. Introducing change to the workflow can be disruptive, so contact centres should focus on introducing UC features that help the process and improve efficiency, rather than simply adding information noise the agent must filter. Focus on integrating high value UC services As previously addressed, seamless integration of UC services requires initially focusing on those capabilities that will deliver an improved, consistent customer experience as well as cost and productivity gains with the contact centre. While each contact centre has its own unique customer bases and communications channels, the industry is currently “Contact centre executives must be sensitive to not overload agents with too much information.” “Contact centre executives must be sensitive to not overload agents with too much information.” gravitating towards a defined set of UC features delivering significant positive impact for enterprise contact centres. These services include: Instant Messaging and Presence (IM&P) that enables agents to resolve issues by tapping the knowledge of co-workers or subject matter experts quickly and in a non-disruptive manner when they are on calls; Video contact centres that enable face-to-face video interaction with customers or permit the agents to include internal subject matter experts via video; and remote/home-based agents that can easily transition between different environments (home, office, remote) and permit organizations to ensure a more consistent customer experience and more effectively manage customer-agent interactions. Benefits of integrating UC into contact centre operations After outlining demand for UC in the contact centre and strategies for ensuring seamless integration, it is important to highlight key benefits that can be experienced by the organization – particularly with regards to hosted UC. Hosted UC solutions introduce some dramatic improvements in the contact centre environment, and when the UC solution consists of an integrated voice and ACD service, it offers a win-win scenario for both the service provider offering the service and the enterprise that is using the service. Specific benefits of integrating UC into the contact centre include: • Reduced TCO – Integrating hosted UC can deliver lower total cost of ownership relative to premise-based UC (50 percent lower in some cases) or standalone legacy contact centre systems. This is achieved through the elimination of capital expenses and lower operational costs. • Improved efficiency – With hosted UC, agents can handle more calls efficiently through the use of Web screen pops with scripts, automatic delivery of customer information to the desktop (CRM info, location info, data entry screens). Agents can also resolve problems immediately through the use of Instant Messaging and Presence by seeing who is available, communicating via a chat session, and resolving problems in real time. • Improved customer satisfaction – Hosted UC solutions provide contact centres with access to high-end features (ACD, callback services, outbound dialers, CRM integration, etc.) typically reserved for large, multinational corporations – triggering new economies of scale for organizations of any size. Some examples are call back services, outbound dialers, and CRM integration. Conclusion While some aspects of UC-legacy system integration have been available to contact centres for some time (with the exception of more recent developments for mobile touch points), the price point has been prohibitive for all but the largest organizations. And even though large organizations could afford the equipment, the process of integrating that equipment to deliver a ‘unified experience’ was difficult. The decreasing cost point and increased comfort level of agents with unified communications improves the value proposition for a wider swath of organizations to integrate UC with legacy contact centre systems. Paul Adams is director, product management at BroadSoft, a leading global provider of IPbased communications services to the telecommunications industry. He can be reached at padams@broadsoft. com. BroadSoft is a worldwide innovator of residential and business Voice over IP (VoIP) applications. For longer than 10 years BroadSoft has been at the forefront of IP technology, helping to advance the convergence of voice, video and data. March / April 2011 contact management.ca 17
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