Planning for SIP Trunking: Considerations to Take into Account
by Mike Sheridan on January 27th, 2012
This article originally appeared in the Nov. 2011 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY.
No matter where I travel in the world, telecom managers’ eyes gleam when the topic of SIP trunking arises. So it wasn’t much of a surprise to me as I looked at a SIP Trunking Snapshot to see that the viewpoint on adoption is still, for the most part, looked at from a futuristic standpoint, but that more and more people are expressing excitement about it. Alright, so we know that there is the potential for immediate and significant cost savings in the business. But what does it mean for those highly regulated outbound contact centers?
From the two-second rule to call abandonment to mandatory caller ID, there are many regulations that organizations understand they need to plan for in regards to their outbound customer contacts. It doesn’t just stop there, though. For other operations, like answering machine detection, it’s important to realize that this transformation requires even further planning to make sure that the experience is equivalent in a SIP environment to a time division multiplexing environment.
And it’s complicated. AMD for outbound SIP connections is typically done by requesting early media where the caller asks the receiver to send audio, even before the call is officially established, allowing processing of the received audio as soon as it’s available. To send the audio, the receiving SIP phone collects the speaker’s voice, taking tiny slices of the audio stream and sending it over the IP network as a data packet. In many cases, the audio is compressed so it takes less network bandwidth, but that also may reduce the audio quality depending on the encoding strategy. The latency of transmission with the packets going through a switched network adds to the delay in reaching the caller. There is also a jitter buffer on the receiver used to reassemble the packets into a continuous audio stream before playing them out so the playback isn’t broken up as there is no assurance that the next packet will arrive exactly when needed.
All of these added times could affect the ability to meet certain regulations that may be in place on how fast an agent or IVR must be connected to the person that answers an automated call. These rules often mandate a response within two seconds, making even a 5 percent increase in receiving audio a potential issue. So while AMD over SIP is absolutely viable, it’s something that needs to be carefully planned for to eliminate any extra delays that could potentially put an organization out of compliance.
What are some things that you’ve encountered when moving to a SIP environment? What about while applying AMD in your outbound SIP connections?
It’s Time for Your Company to Address Data Governance
by David Harper on January 11th, 2012
So I do most of my writing while I travel – specifically, while I am in flight. One topic that I have yet to talk about is data governance, specifically as it relates to business intelligence. Data governance is still somewhat of a new topic. It has existed for websites, and in Microsoft terms, for SharePoint for years now―but why not for data?
In my years of consulting, data ownership is somewhat a game of musical chairs―IT passes it to the business to own, the business passes it right back to IT to regulate, IT passes it back to the business to define, and the business passes it back to IT to standardize. Then the music stops and we see who is left holding the bag….
To be effective, data governance requires a coordinated approach among business and IT leaders. The IT goal should be to have a clear ownership chain and definition set for any piece of structured or unstructured data. The business goal should be to have ownership of the meaning and usage of this data.
With users demanding more self-service BI applications, the ownership of the source can sometimes become diluted. Thankfully, the technology is really picking up the pace to support this process.
The combination of SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 make data governance a fairly streamlined process. Excel Services is a perfect example of how technology can help support data governance.
- The business defines the system of record and creates the definition of the data elements.
- IT creates the Office Data Connection (ODC) file and places it in a secured folder inside of SharePoint.
- Users point their Excel 2010/2007 client to the SharePoint document library to connect to the ODC.
- Users create pivots and charts and upload into SharePoint.
- Users connect to SharePoint to see the end result.
What is so simple and straightforward here is how data are being managed and governed. No more rogue reports that you have to go to Bill in Accounting and pay him in Skittles to unlock the power of data! Strong data governance protects everyone from everyone.
So my questions to you: does your organization have a data governance team? If so, who sits on it and how does it operate? If not – what’s stopping you?!
Say No to a Siloed Architecture
by Chris O'Brien on December 22nd, 2011
Unified communications works best when it delivers on its own promise – unifying communication channels and improving collaboration between employees. Systems that are able to deliver on this promise in the most seamless, lightweight, nonintrusive, intuitive ways are those most successfully embraced by end-users, and ultimately by the organization as a whole, leading to benefits such as heightened productivity, operational efficiencies and cost savings.
The ideal UC scenario is not hard to imagine because it exemplifies a sort of business utopia in which all things work together seamlessly.
Likewise, we’re all equally familiar with the alternative: the “siloed organization.”
Unless you happen to work in an industrial refinery, you’re not likely to encounter siloes in the physical sense. But if they impede your ability to do your job efficiently, they can be all too real.
Many companies seeking a unified solution are actually looking for a way out of siloed operations. However, the fact is many well-known solution providers implement platforms that are not truly unified – meaning, rather than uniting all applications through a common reporting and administration structure, some critical applications must be accessed outside the core platform.
Ironically, although these solutions provide less functionality, they also tend to be more difficult to configure and more expensive to implement. The commitment required to support a siloed architecture can cause an unnecessary administrative burden, complicate IT management and impede the ability to respond quickly to changing market conditions.
Such an architecture can present long-term complications with regard to growth and scalability, as well as advances in technology. Some providers require a forklift upgrade in order for small/midsize businesses to expand from their “express” solution to an “enterprise” solution. Consider the time and inconvenience of a complex hardware upgrade – not to mention the cost associated with all-new components.
Another valuable feature of effective unified communications is its potential for breaking down artificial barriers to productivity. Even teams located in buildings physically separated by thousands of miles can enjoy improved collaboration and speedier issue resolution through greater access to knowledge, documents, networks and each other.
One Aspect client to realize these benefits was MedcoEnergi, Indonesia’s largest privately owned national oil and gas company. Because the company relied heavily on electronic communications, it needed a new solution that could seamlessly integrate with its existing IT infrastructure, remove siloed barriers to information, and easily scale to support rapid growth.
Read the full case study to see how Aspect’s next-generation solution helped implement improved workforce mobility and communications.
Disaster recovery for the contact center, Part 3
by Rachel Muller on September 14th, 2011
The last installment of my disaster recovery blog series concentrated on ways to deploy the telephony infrastructure so that overall contact transaction capacity is not impacted by a major outage. As it turns out, the location of the agent population may ultimately determine how many of those contact transactions your business can complete when a disaster strikes.
Agents who work from a data center or telephony site that experiences a disaster event may not be able to relocate to one of the remaining data centers or telephony sites due to distance constraints or safety concerns (such as impassable roads where the agents live). Consequently, while the business continues to run, contact transaction processing is reduced. Mitigation can be achieved through these options:
- Employ more remote agents. Using more work from home agents reduces the percentage of the agent population impacted by a disaster event.
- Leverage self-service applications. Examine your business and identify areas where contact transactions are not dependent on agents. Requests for transaction status, account balances, and hours of operation are some examples.
- Offer an email channel. If transactions through voice are limited, allow contacts to initiate queries through email. While typically not as fast a turnaround time as voice, at least your customers will have a means for getting their requests made. In addition, the reduced agent population has more time to process requests.
- Use social media. Outlets such as Facebook and Twitter facilitate communication of disruptions in business to both employees and customers. Moreover, social media gives customers the opportunity to initiate transactions that do not necessarily need a real-time response by the available agent population.
Disaster recovery planning involves many facets of your business, only a few of which have been presented in this series. The topic seems to resonate with many of you so I would like to provide more blogs on this subject—but I need your help!
What questions do you have on disaster recovery solutions for the contact center? What challenges do you face with an existing or upcoming disaster recovery plan for your contact center business? Send me your input and we can keep the dialogue going.
Disaster Recovery for the Contact Center, Part 2
by Rachel Muller on September 7th, 2011
With Hurricane Irene still fresh in our minds, it’s time to continue my series on disaster recovery for the contact center. While part 1 focused on a couple of high-level deployment options for disaster recovery solutions, part 2 concentrates on the location of telephony infrastructure.
In most contact centers, the primary communication channel for contact transactions is voice. Consequently, understanding how the location of the devices in the telephony infrastructure contributes to business continuity for the contact center is crucial. A few common options are presented below. While the pictures show both data centers in an active state, the design works equally well for a deployment where one data center is active and the other is standby.
In figure 1 below, the telephony equipment resides within the data centers. Typically, the amount of telephony resources would be overprovisioned at each data center so that the same number of contact transactions is processed regardless of whether both data centers are available or not. This configuration is cost effective when the data centers are located close to the contact population. As shown in the picture, agents can reside within the data centers or be located remotely.
In figure 2, the telephony infrastructure resides in one or more locations separate from the data centers. When both data centers are available, the resources at the telephony sites are shared. When one data center becomes unavailable, all the telephony resources can be devoted to the remaining data center. This enables the same number of contact transactions to be processed even in the event of a data center outage. This deployment works best in situations where the contact and/or agent populations reside in multiple geographic areas. Local and remote agents are supported here as well.
Since the topic of disaster recovery seems to resonate with many of you I am extending the series. Next week, I’ll discuss agent location, which can severely affect how much contact processing your business can handle after a disaster event.
Disaster planning for your contact center
by Rachel Muller on August 3rd, 2011
On May 22, a devastating tornado swept through Joplin, Missouri, taking lives and demolishing homes and businesses in its path.
On May 23, survivors began the arduous task of assessing the damage and rebuilding their community. St. John’s Regional Medical Center, with buildings completely destroyed in the event, needed to resume services to patients as quickly as possible. Fortunately, a recent disaster recovery project had been completed, preserving critical applications and patient records in another data center 250 miles from Joplin. Hospital services were restored within a week, in part through a temporary facility in Joplin and access to patient information in the remote data center.
The tragedy in Joplin underscores the importance of disaster planning, but what does that mean for your contact center business? Here are a couple of questions to consider:
- How quickly will your business be back online after a natural disaster or even a data center power failure?
- What is the cost of lost customer interactions during that time, both in terms of revenue and reputation?
The answers to these questions should enable you to assess the importance of your contact center operations and apply a cost-benefit analysis to the various disaster recovery solutions.
So what kinds of disaster recovery options are available? I’ll focus on some commonly used approaches; however, due to the scope of this topic I will present them in a two-part series. This installment focuses on the use of multiple data centers, typically located hundreds of miles from each other.
Cold Standby Data Center
While agents and contacts are processed through a main data center, a second data center contains the infrastructure necessary to run the contact center application should the main data center become unavailable. However, the application remains offline there. Through manual backup processes or automatic Storage Area Network (SAN) replication technology, the application is periodically copied from the main data center to this second data center. After a loss of the main data center, the backup of the contact center application must be brought online at the second data center. Agents and contacts are then directed there for processing.
Using server virtualization for the infrastructure of the second data center allows the physical servers in the second data center to be used for other functions (such as development or other less critical applications) until needed for your contact center applications. This ability to repurpose physical servers quickly for other uses delivers cost savings.
Likewise, using the cloud for this second data center is another low-cost deployment option, as the pay-as-you-use cloud model would only be employed should the main data center be inaccessible.
Load-Sharing Data Centers
In this design, two or more data centers actively process a subset of the agent and contact transactions. This solution enables your business to continue, albeit at a reduced capacity, until additional agent resources can be directed to the available data center(s). Depending on the nature of the disaster, agents may be in a location where they cannot access the available data center(s).
Here again, the costs of multiple data center locations may be mitigated by hosting a contact center application instance in the cloud, especially if you don’t need full capacity in the event a disaster occurs. A reduced capacity contact center application would need fewer compute resources, thus making it a cost-effective solution.
In part 2, I’ll share some ideas on disaster-planning considerations for your telephony infrastructure and self-service applications.
Ensuring your contact center can meet the needs of the “always on” world
by Rachel Muller on May 13th, 2011
The advent of the next-generation contact center brings a new set of challenges. With customers, agents, and knowledge workers residing in locations all over the globe and 24/7 social media outlets, the dependency on a continuously available system is greater than ever. How can your organization meet the needs of today’s consumers while maximizing ROI in the contact center?
Here are three key areas to consider:
Availability
A customer’s inability to access the system or complete an interaction due to unplanned downtime can adversely impact the perception of your business and future revenue. A solution that detects common data center failures such as power and network disruptions and can recover quickly reduces the impact on business operations. Equally important, these disruptions must not affect existing conversations between customers and agents and new interactions initiated by customers.
Business continuity
Will your business operations come to a standstill if the data center is impacted by a natural disaster? An next-generation contact center enables load balancing of agent and contact transactions across two or more geographic locations. If disaster strikes a data center at one location, impacted agents and customers reconnect to the remaining data centers. Centralized management tools enable administration and reporting of activity across the multiple geographic locations.
Data center compatibility
Back in the day, call centers were built on proprietary hardware that required specialized setup, making them ill-suited to fit into the corporate data center and costly to maintain. A solution that efficiently utilizes off-the-shelf blade servers, server virtualization, and Storage Area Network technologies – the most common infrastructure components of the modern data center both on premise and in the cloud – minimizes the cost and complexity of maintaining the system.
By factoring these crucial criteria into the evaluation of next generation contact center products, you can create an “always on” business and let your customers experience consistent, high-quality interactions at all times.
Communications as a Service – New or just a new name?
by Michael Ely on January 28th, 2011
I’m always intrigued when I read about Communications as a Service (CaaS) as a new entry into the service market, since several of these services have been around for many years, some as old as the telephone itself. Of course the offerings today, including unified communications and IP contact centers, are so much more than dial tone and making calls.
As a recent HP white paper points out, CaaS is still a growing market, with small and midsize businesses eager to leverage the latest technologies with minimal IT staffing and infrastructure costs. Having limited business communications with just basic phone operations or even full PBX capabilities won’t cut it in today’s market where collaboration and customer service differentiate the winners from everyone else.
One of the white paper’s key lines offers advice to potential CaaS providers: “You need to be seen as a trusted advisor with them (SMBs).” Today, when a multitude of companies are offering solutions, finding a partner with the experience, portfolio, and lasting power to ensure your communications choices work— not only today, but into the future as well— is indispensible.
So while CaaS may seem like the same old story, it’s really about making communications seamless and efficient between your customers and within your business, without a huge infrastructure investment. And isn’t that key to the success of every business?
IP for the customer-centric contact center
by Michael Ely on October 1st, 2010
Whether you’re a developer, IT or Business Professional, it’s hard to avoid seeing commentary, reviews and debate on the changing technology landscape almost everywhere you turn. In my role at Aspect, customers and prospects often ask me about the changes they can make to “get current”, save money, and work smarter. It’s what all of us want to do, isn’t it? There are a number of great, attainable answers to these burning questions.
One of them is near and dear to my heart: the IP Contact Center. While this phrase has been in our vernacular for nearly a decade, IP Contact Centers are just now becoming the ‘norm’ and we’ve learned so much from successful and not-so-successful deployments and usage scenarios.
How we use IP in the contact center is critical to the customer experience we deliver. Yes, IP gives us more flexibility. It can save money on hardware and upgrades. But what does this mean for our customers?
IP Contact Centers provide the connection between customers and the enterprise, but the ways in which the contact center works with the business are just as important as how it works with customers. There are several areas to explore as you contemplate enhancing your IP Contact Center, or upgrading to IP from your existing environment. I will be talking about these at next week’s SCRM Expo in Los Angeles (October 4th, 2:15 pm), so mull this over in the meantime:
- Customers don’t just call anymore – supporting all the ways which your customer wants to communicate with you is no longer a luxury but a competitive requirement.
- Consider how you can use social networking as a means to interact with your customers to provide valuable marketing information and proactive customer care.
- Unified communications plays a big role in how your contact center agents will work with the rest of the enterprise, aiding with collaboration and first call resolution – resulting in a better customer experience.
- Interoperability is key. Your vendors should have interoperability policies to make sure they work together seamlessly. Be wary of ‘mandatory’ or proprietary extensions which limit your choices of what works together.
Leave me a comment and stop by SCRM Expo to continue this discussion. See you there!
Bringing social networking into your IT strategy?
by Manish Chandak on June 28th, 2010
We are beginning to see organizations trying to provide some social networking tools within the enterprise to enhance customer-company communications. With growth in collaboration platform tools, social tools don’t need to be one-off projects; they can be an integrated approach to your customer experience strategy. The concept of bringing “social within the organization” is probably a matter of when, rather than if. We have seen this evolution with email and then with instant messaging tools. They all started in the consumer space and most organizations were skeptical of their internal value. Today email is a critical business tool and most organizations have adopted presence and instant messaging. Current communication tools and collaboration platforms are already integrating these capabilities. One good example is the integration between LinkedIn and Microsoft Outlook. Another is the pervasive use of wikis or content management within SharePoint.
Within social tools, wikis and blogs have already been well accepted; we are particularly seeing a broad usage of wikis. But this is still a very structured use that is easy for most organizations to envision. The bigger change is with unstructured social tools – activity feeds, employee profiles, walls and statuses. These are being leveraged in some organizations to create a bond between formal groups and special interest groups. Informal groups are being formed based on subscriptions and interests.
I am interested in seeing how well these tools get adopted by our clients. So when do you think your organization will introduce these tools and if you have already adopted them, how have they changed the way employees interact?
Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.