E² Business Solutions
Call Center Technology Features

1. Call Center Profiles
2. Technical Environments
3. Product Positioning
4. Summary

Description
The call center market for the Enterprise Interaction Center (EIC) is broadly defined as inbound and outbound, small to mid-size or departmental call centers with 25-150 users at a single site. The organization determining the needs and/or driving the search process for a new system must be in the business of handling calls or other interactions. In comparison, organizations searching for a company-wide system where call center functionality was not the primary need would fit in the Enterprise category.

1. Call Center Profiles

Most call centers have very similar needs; whether they are departmental call centers or entire companies in the call center business. Therefore, target customer profiles can be defined in terms of broad functional requirements and business situations instead of by industry, size, etc.

Call centers requiring any or all of the following functionality are ideal candidates for EIC:

• Advanced Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
  Many vendors offer some form of ACD, but they are often limited to simple routing techniques such as "longest available" or even simpler, by "hunt group". More advanced ACD routing techniques such as skills-based routing or premium queuing often come as expensive add-ons to PBX-based systems. In addition, add-on ACDs are typically separate machines that sit outside the PBX, making end-to-end reporting difficult and creating multiple points of failure. Advanced ACD functionality is completely integrated into EIC and comes as part of the standard package.
   
• Multimedia Queuing (EIC 2.0)
  Call centers need to be able to handle interactions made up of multiple media types as varied as voice, fax, e-mail, and web chat. PBX-based systems require multiple machines just to handle the different media types, and even then cannot integrate their distribution to call center agents, making interaction management a nightmare. EIC handles multiple media types individually today and will offer completely coordinated queuing and distribution in version 2.0.
   
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
  IVR systems in the past were separate, proprietary, expensive add-on systems that were difficult to integrate, manage, and maintain. Standard voice calls over a telephone were the only interaction method they supported. Today's call center needs access to data in a variety of ways, for a variety of purposes. EIC can access data in any ODBC-compliant database, allowing a single data source to be used for multiple interaction types- phone, fax, e-mail, web, etc.
   
• Computer - Telephone Integration (CTI)
  CTI often means "screen pop" to many end-users. While it can be much more than that, one thing it has always meant is "more money". PBX vendors have offered CTI "links", "bridges", or "gateways" in an effort to bridge the gap between the telephony and data worlds. But CTI is only a temporary hack or kludge that attempts to extend the life of an obsolete architecture. EIC provides complete computer-telephone integration by design, gracefully integrating the data and telephony worlds in a manner that is simply impossible with traditional PBX-based systems.
   
• Fax Broadcast and Fax On Demand
  Fax is another functional area that is traditionally served by standalone, proprietary systems. Call centers may be able to buy a fax server as part of an overall package from a PBX vendor, or they might choose to purchase one of the many separate, third-party products available from other vendors. But this approach gives them only the ability to send and receive faxes, not the ability to integrate fax with other methods of communication. Especially in the case of Fax On Demand, many standalone fax systems require the call center to conform to pre-determined scripts and fax request and delivery procedures. EIC gives call centers the tools and flexibility to adapt their fax services to their customers' needs, even to the point of handling each customer differently if necessary.
   
• Web and E-mail Integration
  Call centers requiring integration with the corporate web site or e-mail server have few if any choices when dealing with traditional PBX-based systems. PBX vendors are just now starting to realize that they need to integrate web and e-mail services with their products, and so far they have chosen to do this with expensive, "bolt-on" third-party products that offer no true integration with their voice-only PBXs or ACDs. Integration with these products is as about as kludgey as it comes. EIC, having been designed to seamlessly bridge the gap between voice and data, provides true integration for e-mail, web chat, web callback, and Voice Over Net (VON) calls (EIC 2.0 for VON).
   
• Call Monitoring and Recording
  Simple call monitoring is available in almost any system. But more sophisticated monitoring and recording is frequently available only with an expensive add-on, standalone system. With today's trend toward mobile agents (both within and outside of the call center), call center managers need a more flexible approach. They need to be able to monitor or record any agent, any phone, or any line. With EIC, monitoring and recording any call center resource is a simple click of the mouse. Recording can even be completely automated, and call centers with recording-intensive applications (such as a brokerage) can choose to take advantage of Interaction Recorder, a tool for managing high volumes of recordings.
   
• Customized Reporting
  Basic call center systems offer packages of pre-designed reports that hope to cover the majority of call center requirements. More sophisticated systems offer the purchase of proprietary report design applications to create and run customized reports. But EIC, by being based on open standards, allows the call center manager to create customized reports with lower-cost, easier to use, industry standard report writing applications such as Crystal Reports.
   
• Unified Messaging
  With the trend toward handling multiple interaction types, call center agents need every tool available to make them more efficient. Unified messaging is such a tool. Standalone systems offering unified messaging are a good start, but they don't provide an end-to-end solution for the call center. They are merely depositories. They do nothing to aid in work flow and interaction management. Unified messaging, when combined with a multimedia interaction processor like EIC, affords the call center the opportunity to use powerful tools to receive, route, manage, respond to, and report on all interactions without getting overwhelmed.
   
• Private Branch Exchange (PBX)
  PBX is the one area that traditional systems have covered fairly well in terms of functionality. But what they lack is ease of use. Who can remember all of those feature codes or key combinations? Traditional PBX-based systems that have tried to offer software-based phones have missed the mark, requiring serial CTI links and other hacks, resulting in applications that are never quite "right". EIC is able to provide complete PBX functionality for call centers that are not linked to a corporate PBX and a software client that is intuitive and easy to use comes standard.

Call centers in the following business situations are ideal candidates for EIC:

• Rapid Expansion
  Call centers that expect to expand need a system that can expand with them. PBX-based systems can make expansion difficult and expensive due to their reliance on proprietary hardware. Often, expansion beyond a certain threshold can require a "forklift" upgrade, requiring the call center to dump its entire existing system and start fresh with a newer, bigger, more expensive piece of equipment. EIC makes expansion easy by allowing the insertion of additional station or line cards, the addition of a second chassis (EIC 2.0) and by using inexpensive, standard analog phone sets.
   
• Changing Business Needs
  Along with rapid expansion, constantly changing business needs make up another ideal situation for EIC. With their proprietary operating systems, menu-driven application interface, and requirement for highly specialized training, PBX-based systems make the slightest little change a difficult task. EIC allows call centers to make the changes they need quickly, efficiently, and without having to interrupt call center operations. Adding users and lines, changing call flow, and reassigning resources all takes place in a point and click, drag and drop interface. Multiple Locations The trend toward decentralized operations means that call centers which once consisted of hundreds of agents in huge buildings may now be geographically dispersed into multiple smaller, more manageable call centers. Traditional systems are unable to integrate interaction management at the single call center level, so how are they going to integrate multiple call centers? They can't. EIC 2.0 will allow multiple call centers to act as one, intelligently managing interactions within and between those call centers.
   
• Remote Agents
  Telecommuting and "on-call" agents are becoming more and more popular. Traditional PBX-based systems are able to support some remote agent capabilities, but are typically limited to voice-only interactions. EIC 2.0 will make remote agents appear as if they are sitting in the call center, with all of the interaction processing, call control, monitoring, and recording capabilities of an ordinary agent.
   
• Informal Call Centers
  Traditionally, call center functionality has stayed in the call center. The only way to apply some of the same interaction management processes to other departments (e.g. Accounting, Shipping, etc.) was to put them on the call center system- even if that meant giving some people two phones. That's just silly. EIC allows other departments to operate with some of the same interaction processing rules as the call center without all the hassles of their personnel being full-time call center agents. This can improve the way the call center interacts with other departments, and the way those departments interact with outside customers.

2. Technical Environments

Call centers with most or all of the following technical attributes are candidates for EIC:

• TCP/IP-based LAN
• Windows NT servers, established Windows NT Domain NT can be installed just for EIC, but call centers with NT already installed will be most attracted.
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation or Windows 95/98 on desktops Other desktop operating systems such as Mac and UNIX are supported with the java-based client.
• Microsoft Exchange as messaging platform Lotus Notes support available
• Microsoft Internet Information Server for web hosting Netscape and Apache support in EIC 1.3
• T1 and/or ISDN PRI Indicates high volume or advanced needs

3. Product Positioning

EIC offers tremendous advantages over traditional PBX-based systems. The key differentiators are:

• All-in-one, integrated functionality
  Call center solutions offered by traditional vendors are a mix of expensive, proprietary machines with different operating systems, different administrative interfaces, and different quirks. The only true integration being done is by the vendor's marketing department. Multiple systems means there are multiple points for any one interaction to fail. A completely integrated approach is the only way to effectively handle all of the demands placed on a modern call center.
   
• Flexibility
  Call centers are by nature highly dynamic environments. The ability to rapidly adapt to changing business situations is a key competency of world class organizations. But traditional PBX-based systems don't share those attributes. Making changes on the fly during the busiest hours of the day is virtually impossible, and often requires highly trained personnel to be on site or an expensive support contract with guaranteed response times to be maintained. EIC allows organizations to make changes whenever necessary, without interrupting normal call center operations. Due to its intuitive graphical interface, EIC is easy to learn and can be maintained by personnel without advanced training.
   
• Open standards
  Traditional telecom systems have been built on closed, proprietary platforms for years. Doing anything other than what the vendor intended was next to impossible. In fact, it's why we have a "CTI" industry today. Thousands of hours of work have gone into building links to these proprietary systems, in an attempt to squeeze out a little extra functionality. EIC destroys this model by being built on industry-standard, open interfaces. This allows EIC to be easily adapted to fit every call center's needs. The possibilities are virtually endless.
   
• Architecture
  PBX-based systems have been around for a long time, and they show it. Having been architected in the days prior to the PC revolution, PBX vendors are now struggling to provide connectivity to the data world without abandoning their very important legacy customers. EIC has no such hinderances. EIC was designed from the ground up to bridge the voice and data worlds, take advantage of open standards, and integrate with common enterprise applications. Today there is a clear choice to be made between traditional PBX/CTI solutions and the next generation solution: pure computer telephony.
   
• Cost
  While some vendors are able to piece together enough systems to create what appears to be a complete call center solution, these solutions become very expensive both in initial and long term costs. There is almost no way that traditional vendors can offer the same functionality for the same cost as EIC can. Potential customers should be encouraged to "peek behind the curtain" when offered promises of equivalent or integrated functionality by PBX vendors. Chances are that they are on the yellow brick road only to see the "Wizard of Marketing", and that should be exposed for what it is. Call centers have a high degree of cost-consciousness and EIC is the best way for them to maximize their bang for the buck.

4. Summary

Call centers are the most technologically demanding environment in the telecom marketplace. They have outgrown traditional PBX-based systems and are being required to push efficiency to higher levels than ever before. Being a highly flexible, scalable, and technically advanced solution, EIC is the best product to help call centers achieve their goals.