What Is A Contact Center And Does My Business Need One?

A contact center is a unified communications system that easily connects customers with the right agent at the right time. What does that mean? Really, what it means is that a company can leverage and manage a wide variety of customer relations across multiple channels including phone, business website, live chat, email, instant messaging and even video all with one “dashboard”application.

Why is this important to a business? This type of management improves the customer experience by providing answers to questions when they need them, which in-turn improves sale conversions. A contact center is proven to help a business become lean in operating processes resulting in lower costs and higher revenue.

What’s the difference between a call center and a contact center?

Most people are familiar with traditional call centers which route inbound and outbound calls for multiple companies, typically handled at a separate location from the company. A contact center is connect both internal and external customers to the right agent at the right time. Essentially, it’s a more robust form of call center that allows businesses to manage large volumes of different types of inquiries ranging from customer service calls, sales calls to website inquiries and integrate those inquires with a CRM or customer relationship management service.

There may not seem like much of a difference between a contact center and a call center, especially today, since most call centers are adopting contact center capabilities, but a contact center truly does provide a higher level of service.

Adept Networks partners with both ShoreTel and Allworx to provide the most robust and advanced premise based contact centers available. These contact center solutions have proven to help reduce operating costs by streamlining business processes. First, companies are able to eliminate costly third party conferencing services.Secondly, businesses are able to put critical information within reach of those who need it and that applies to both employees and customers. Lastly, businesses are able to eliminate missed phone calls and delayed responses, which is a serious problem for companies that handle large volumes of calls.

What is an example of how a contact center improves business operations?

Glad you asked. It’s one thing to say that a contact center provides an all-in-one solution for managing multimedia inbound and outbound capabilities, but what the heck does that mean to anyone? Simply put, a contact center allows agents or employees to work from anywhere. OK, maybe that’s not such good news for them, but here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say an employee is moving from state to state to manage different aspects of your multiple locations, well, the employee can access the call center from anywhere to make sure nothing’s been missed while away and conversely, the contact center can route calls right to the agent or employee based on specific criteria such as; need, status, service level, location or wait time.

Pretty cool, but wait, there’s more. When the agent is contacted they also receive critical information about the caller or contact in order to help them field the call in the best way. A contact center is completely geared towards improving productivity. Adept uses premise based contact solutions by ShoreTel and Allworx because they are easy to deploy, maintain and use.  Those are the 3 key ingredients to a successful contact center.

The Allworx contact center features a very robust call management solution that allows businesses to distribute calls in linear priority, round robin, longest idle and ring all to maximize answered calls. Aside from flexible queuing options there are a host of supervisor management tools and call assistant features.

Jake Larsen, Contact Center Manager for MonaVie had this to say about ShoreTels contact center system, “The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center allows us to easily blend agent skills and language skills since we service over 10 different languages and even more countries round the clock. Email routing to specialized super-agents has added one more sales avenue for us. Using the open interfaces and simple yet powerful ECC scripting we’ve also created a powerful outbound survey application, and integrated it with the ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center IVR engine quickly and easily. The outbound survey application has allowed us to assess our customer satisfaction levels and assess agent training needs. “

When you’re not able to be at your business in person and you can’t field calls, help customers and land importune leads then a contact center just might be the solution your business needs.

© http://www.adeptnetworks.com/ See original article here.

Zultys MX30: A Look Under the Hood

Overall, the Zultys solution is packed with convergence and it definitely reduces installation time.

Neil Lichtman, CEO of Zultys recently told me how Zultys improved their products (Zultys Delivers Value & Wins Deals) for simplicity and reduced installation steps. Zultys announced their win with Martin Engineering (seeZultys Wins Global Rollout) and I wanted to have a good look under the hood for myself. Neil took me up on my offer to review the Zultys platform.

The MX30 is just a little bigger than the Apple Mac Mini Server. The tested phone was the ZIP 55iZultys label using the Aastra (6755i model). I liked the phone, its appearance, real estate (buttons/soft keys) and balance (feel). I got curious and visited Zultys' website to find their phone lineup here: Zip Phones

A hardware manual that shipped with the system gave me enough information to log into the system under the console mode and then download the Administrator software. The system configuration wizard had the system online in minutes. I'm not a Zultys dealer and haven't been to any training. Zultys does offer new dealers assistance simply by completing a form to utilize their Initial Deployment Program (IDP), detailing the dealer system to be installed. The Zultys IDP is available to qualified partners and provides an assertive approach to initial Zultys system deployments. IDP adopts a proactive approach for initial installations to help ensure a higher quality experience for VARs as well as their end-users. This is a value add program for their dealers/VARs with installation assistance.

Built in documentation was helpful too and I did read parts of it. Within minutes the system was configured using the onboard wizard and in a few minutes more the automated attendant was up and running--I didn't need to hassle to write a script and then find someone to record it (customarily an issue in the SMB market with customers) because the built in text-to-audio conversion points to a Zultys server in Sunnyvale that loads the wav file in the desired format with what is typed in a text box. Other languages and male or female voices are selectable or customers can use a sound program to create their own recordings in the acceptable audio format. Initially, I typed: "Thank you for calling Telecomworx, If you know the extension number of the party you are calling please dial it now or just press 9 for a company directory." Since Telecomworx sounded a bit off--I retyped "Telecom works" and it sounded right on. So a quick lesson here is to use phonetics when necessary. Zultys delivers an in-skin voice mail/Automated Attendant and there's no hard drive but instead a flash drive in the MX30 only. The dial plan tool is easy to master as is creating programming templates to speed up station programming.

The SIP phone audio quality is outstanding on the Zip 55i and that was the first thing I noticed when placing calls. I monitored in real time outgoing calls made through the system using ADTRAN's VQM feature in our IAD. G.711 compression was shown for all calls made and again the audio quality scored excellent. The system shipped with a 4-port analog FXO card, and another cool feature is the built in calibration tool that Zultys uses to reduce echo. All that's required are a few mouse clicks, and within seconds the system makes necessary adjustments to the FXO ports in use. This feature is key in that it removes subjectivity from the process and ensures the best sound quality is delivered to the users. There's no need for external analog loop current attenuators since Zultys accomplishes basically the same thing using software. MXIE is the client software I downloaded to my desktops (Mac OS 10.6.7 desktop & Windows XP PRO laptop) and bound the clients with my SIP desk phone. Zultys permits 6 devices to be bound to one user, and this allowed me to use the softphone on my laptop and the MXIE client on my desktop in addition to the desktop phone. The iConnected client will work on my iPhone as I previously experienced and wrote about here. This brings up my device count to 4. Zultys alternatively allows 5 users to be bound to 1 device. Later, I easily changed MXIE on the fly and pointed the Zip phone to the Zultys system in Sunnyvale to become a telecommuter using both desktop phone and MXIE. The UC package (MXIE) is tightly fitted with options and works between three worlds (Apple, Linux and Windows).

The Syslog with color-coded messages (for severity) is viewable after launching the Admin software. The "Device Status" is handy, showing all devices and whether they have registered. "Sessions" shows active SIP sessions and "Circuit Status" shows parameters, traffic metrics and IP information including status on the LAN, WAN and optional ports. "SIP Monitor" shows statistics for registration attempts and responses to SIP requests. The backup and restore features also include a scheduled backup and archive. The system maintenance section includes plenty of tools, and there's even a customer support server connection created by tunneling to allow the factory folks to observe and diagnose the system. There are numerous system monitors too and these tools are well placed. The "Call Monitoring" tool will be a hit with any dealer/VAR or IT support person to troubleshoot issues. The onboard system tools are placed so dealers/VARS and even customers don't hang themselves by not having resources to troubleshoot (SIP/VoIP/T1-PRI) issues that would vex anyone. My favorite collaboration feature is MxMeeting and this allows companies to meet online and even take control of customer desktops. Conferencing and collaboration are strong features in Zultys software and these can be used for numerous customer applications. MXMeeting currently requires an external Zultys appliance and licensing.

Zultys' MXreport custom report writer provides Call Center managers and System Administrators with deep insight into call handling and agent performance. MXreport taps into nearly 50 call detail record (CDR) fields through an easy-to-use drag-and-drop report builder interface that lets managers create and output their own custom reports that include graphs and key data. Reports can be generated into spreadsheets and other document formats. Any telephony solution requires providing accountability, and a good reporting package isn't just to keep employees honest but it is crucial for troubleshooting and immediacy in making staffing/resource decisions about telephone traffic in your business. Zultys provides an optional Inbound Call Center solution and the one capability I like is the Call Attached Data (CAD). This feature allows agents, supervisors and end users to enter critical call information and notes into a pop-up "Post-It Notes" window, and this data is searchable and exportable. Zultys also ties to standard ODBC database access and provides the ability to offload CDR into another server to lighten the load on the IP-PBX. Key Report Features

* Intuitive “"Drag and Drop" user interface builds custom reports in seconds
* Modify call data field reports according to unique ranges and qualifiers
* Run reports for individuals and call groups
* Flexible reporting timeframe lets users generate reports based on call activity by quarter-hour, hour, day, week, month and year.
* Create and save call record reporting templates
* Accesses nearly 50 call detail record data fields to provide granular call analysis and reporting
* Built-in graphic reporting tool
* Reports can be saved in common document formats such as Excel, Word, HTML, TXT, CSV, ODS, GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG and more
* Enables companies to improve performance and account for specific customer and company call activities for billing, legal and regulatory needs

Zultys agreed to let me experience being a telecommuter using their phone and MXIE client tethered to their system in Sunnyvale. A few simple changes to the SIP phone using my browser (Safari) and in minutes I had connectivity. Again, the audio quality was excellent. (Note the MOS scores in the screen shot at the end of this page.)

Overall, the Zultys solution is packed with convergence and it definitely reduces installation time. For dealers/VARs you need to focus on the customization opportunities within the system that enables you to deliver what the customer wants, when and where. For some of the competitors of Zultys, what I don't understand is why more solutions don't have onboard tools? For those that need convincing read Sorell Slaymaker's post, SIP Trunking Maturity: 7 out of 10 and note that SIP trunks must have support mechanisms and that's only one of many areas of support required in an IP solution. Why do administrators need to hassle to just get a telecommuter a desktop phone that works? Vendors without focus to deliver what the telecommuter wants (easy to deploy softphone or deskphone) are missing a key opportunity. Then, if your solution doesn't easily support Apple OS, Linux and Windows OS users, another divide is created. People want to communicate with the tools of their choice; limit their choices and you just may end up limiting your revenue potential. There are no 2500 sets, no relays and contacts. The built-in fax server is another feature that eliminates standalone fax machines and provides the ability to use multiple fax numbers. The Zultys all-in-one system is very thoughtfully and purposely laid out in such a way that installation is easy, as is using the system and features.

What I like about the system feel is I don't feel trapped in the vendor's solution because customization is available throughout the platform and that is a huge advantage in selling to numerous verticals. The other capability I like as a business owner is the ability to add licenses as I can afford them. Zultys has hit on key ownership elements of the SMB: simplicity, value and application. The overall empowering trait is the amount of convergence found in the solution, system tools and how well thought out this product is.

As a competitor, I'm envious.

 © Matt Brunk  Find original article here.