Telephone as a part of the corporate WAN may be reaching a point of irrelevancy in many ways.
Is Telephony Dead?
Over the years, we had two seismic shifts in the use of corporate networks to transmit voice. The first came in the 1980s when the majority of telephony was carried via the telephony providers. Even in the case of corporate “intranets” for telephony, analog “leased lines” were used to connect corporate PBXs.
The first was of voice-data integration came with the use of T-1/E-1-type equipment to replace these “tie-lines” for a portion of the “vast” 1.5M to 2Mbps of available bandwidth. In fact, the savings on telephony could often be used to provide “free” data service. The converse was also true in that data cost savings could provide “free” voice.
We then entered a phase of voice-data segregation. Data networks were more appropriately served by packet-based technologies, voice service providers cut prices to the point that having a voice-only contract was a fraction of the price that it was a decade earlier.
Rather rapidly in the late 1990s, however, technological advances were made that enabled “toll quality” voice over packet systems, so now essentially all voice traffic is carried over some form of packet-switched data net.
This is going to continue to escalate. One area that will be particularly important is in the “call center.” (This will, of course, depend to a certain extent on the nature of the business.) For several years, the terminology to refer to that function that provides customer service have evolved from being the “call center” to being the “contact center.” The difference here, of course, is that the “call center” implies a telephony-oriented interaction while the “contact center” involves multiple types of media. And, of course, one of the enabling technologies for this has been the move to IP-based systems, especially as enabled by SIP and related protocols.
One particularly interesting trend in the contact center is merging traditional communications methods with social media. A recent white paper, “Contact Centers Go Social,” examines this trend in a good degree of detail.
This is one of several trends being examined in a new study by the Webtorials Analyst Group on “Contact Center Trends and Priorities.” As you might expect, we’re finding that the importance of the “voice component” of contact centers is rapidly decreasing. We’ll be sharing many of the results as we complete the analysis, so stay tuned.
