The big picture of IP call centers

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Please note that, as of 9/29/03, all of your valued Network World Fusion newsletters will be delivered to you from nwfnews.com. If you use filters to manage your newsletters based on domain name, please adjust accordingly.

To summarize our series on the IP call center: call center operators now have an opportunity to benefit from advances in IP telephony and from advances in information systems integration.

Given that quality of service (QoS), reliability, and security can be addressed with today’s IP-based phone system, an IP-based call model can reduce network management costs and reduce long-distance costs.

Using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and presence, IP call centers can benefit from the flexibility of a distributed call center, provided the distributed model better meets their business requirements. And given the multimedia signaling characteristics of SIP, today’s call center can easily integrate e-mail and Web services like collaboration and Web chat. The use of multiple media gives enterprise customers a wider choice of contact options.

With the broad adoption of Web-based protocols like XML in back-office software like enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications, integration becomes much simpler for computer telephony integration, offering an order-of-magnitude reduction in the time required for development and implementation. By integrating the enterprise IT applications and making them available through the contact center, the contact center can become a single point of entry for employees and customers alike – a strategic resource for information management.

Finally, these combined advantages of cost reduction and ease of implementation can yield a more affordable call center model so that large businesses can do more with less, and midsized and smaller businesses have an opportunity to deploy a cost-effective call center operation.

Next week, we’ll move to on some IP telephony study results and analysis from Steve’s recent IP telephony survey.