Contact Center: Unplugged

Put Your Seatbacks and Tray Tables In An Upright Position; Contact Center Convergence Is Beginning To Take Flight

Author:  Gary Barnett

It looks like the contact center is converging with the enterprise thanks to UC. Take, for example, the idea of tapping expertise found in knowledge workers throughout the enterprise – a concept that has been a holy grail for many. The challenge has been identifying when a knowledge worker with the required skills is available to assist and how best to communicate with them.

After all, I know very few people who will agree to tell their employer when they will start work and end the work day, when they are on a phone call, when they are in a meeting, when they want to go to the water cooler, and so on. Of course, by accepting their job, contact center agents agree to do all of the above and more. But, through their sharing of presence via Enterprise IM tools such as Microsoft Office Communicator (OCS), knowledge workers are “telling” everyone else in the business both when and how they are available for communications. The trick then, is to integrate the contact center technologies to enterprise presence engines.

This integration suddenly allows organizations to bring together communication channels and technology to enrich the customer experience with the expertise that knowledge workers can offer. It gives contact center agents a newfound ability to access the availability of experts within the enterprise according to a presence engine. When an available expert is found, the connection is established according to the preferred media type.  Whether by phone, IM or video, the agent can discuss the inquiry with the knowledge worker and, if necessary, conference in the customer’s call. This whole process can improve first-call resolution and ultimately enhance the customer experience.

In the end, the most critical part of this evolution is to manage it, so as not to create a higher tech version of the isolated individual worker – totally plugged in, yet working solo. There is clearly a growing interest in solutions that can improve communications-enabled business processes across the whole enterprise, not just in the contact center.  But, for the immediate future, there is definitely an education process ahead of us when it comes to UC, and it’s all a work in progress.

Where does your enterprise currently stand with its UC strategy?

Author: Gary Barnett
Catergories: Contact Center Technology, Unified Solutions, Unified Communications

Comments (1)

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...