Contact Centers
Contact centers are the hubs of the customer service efforts of
many growing businesses. Forward-thinking companies are integrating this key
function with Internet technology to transform customer care into a powerful
business-building force.
Firms such as catalog sellers, telemarketers, and computer
helpdesks use traditional contact centers to manage large volumes of telephone
calls and customer contacts. Contact center applications route incoming calls to
sales and service agents who can respond to customer needs. Integrating this
contact center activity with an Internet-based customer-relationship management
(CRM) solution gives agents immediate access to customer purchase histories,
order tracking capabilities, and other key information and tools. This enhanced
information flow enables contact center staff to use customer interaction to
build customer loyalty and retention.
Traditional contact center technology, as illustrated in Figure B-10, recognizes incoming contact
requests (for example, calls, e-mails, faxes, and web requests) and routes them
to available agents. These contact center technologies
include recognition of customer telephone numbers, account numbers, or IDs.
Customer data appears on the agent computer screen, ensuring that the agent can
access the customer orders, account balance, and other crucial data. However,
real-time collaboration between the customer and the agent is limited to the
spoken word. Services and product offerings are limited to verbal description,
usually a script read by the agent.
Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) with Internet access allows
contact center agents to respond to customer queries over a variety of channels,
such as telephone, e-mail, web, and fax.
As an example, consider a situation where a customer calls a
contact center with questions about a new product and an agent can immediately
send an e-mail message that includes product specifications and a link to a
downloadable interactive demo. This scenario allows customer-service agents to
take on sales and marketing roles, which helps the company roll out new
initiatives and promotions quickly to targeted customers. Other ways to enhance
real-time customer collaboration include fax-back services and web-page
collaboration, where the customer and agent interact on the same web page to
ensure, for example, that the color of a sweater is correct.
Contact centers use a range of telephone, computer, and
network technologies, including VoIP. In Figure B-10, Cisco Intelligent Call Management (ICM)
software is at the heart of the contact center application. The ICM uses CTI
technology to deliver caller account information to the agent desktop while the
agent receives the VoIP call. The location independence of the agents adds
another benefit to this model. "Follow-the-sun" customer support programs allow
around-the-clock customer service, regardless of the agent location.
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