Mobile contact center moves to the cloud

Hosted functions empower mobile experts and their managers

Industry analysis by expert Joanie Wexler, plus links to the day's wireless news headlines

Most organizations need a way to route callers and Internet visitors to customer service experts within the company. Traditionally, larger companies have met the requirement with a physical call center, where stationary agents sit and handle customer queries directed to them from a queue.

Call centers often now are called "contact" centers, because there are many methods beyond a simple phone call that customers can use to contact a company.

REPORT: Mobility, faster call handling goal of cutting-edge call centers

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Most organizations need a way to route callers and Internet visitors to customer service experts within the company. Traditionally, larger companies have met the requirement with a physical call center, where stationary agents sit and handle customer queries directed to them from a queue.

Call centers often now are called "contact" centers, because there are many methods beyond a simple phone call that customers can use to contact a company.

REPORT: Mobility, faster call handling goal of cutting-edge call centers

Some smaller companies, particularly those that are largely mobile, don't necessarily perceive the need for a physical contact center. The real estate, power and equipment costs to house stationary agents aren't in everyone's budget. However, smaller companies can nonetheless match customer needs with appropriate specialists, even those who are mobile, by turning to the latest cloud services.

Last week, for example, Fonality announced an application service for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) of less than about 250 employees. Its cloud-based Fonality Heads Up Display (HUD) Mobile works with devices running the Apple iOS and Google Android mobile operating systems, notes Daryl Reva, product marketing manager.

Reva says that Fonality HUD Mobile "mirrors about 90% of the features of [Fonality's] desktop unified communications application," dubbed Fonality HUD. Pushed out to smartphones are features like fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) in the form of Wi-Fi telephony support, access to the company directory, integrated mailboxes and presence.

Managers on their own mobile devices have a view of all agents logged in and out of various queues and can monitor all calls, Reva says. For example, they can see if a call has stretched longer than the expected time period and can whisper or send a chat to employees asking if they need assistance.

Fonality says that TCO is cut by 50% when using the cloud service over a premises-based solution. The reason is that, like all cloud or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, it requires no capital investments in infrastructure.

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.