Building the Next–
Generation Contact Center
from the Ground UP
Bar Veinstein
Product Marketing Manager
NICE System
bar.veinstein@nice.com
What We’ll Cover Today
• What is VoIP, and why should I care?
• IP in the contact center: What changes and
what stays the same?
• Pure IP Telephony vs. Hybrid
• How IP allows you to move from a contact
“center” to a customer interaction network
• Why to record customer interactions?
• How to record VoIP interactions
• VoIP vs. Traditional Recording
• NICE VoIP & Cisco – Case Study
VoIP Basics: Key Terms and Concepts
• VoIP – voice over IP
• IP Telephony – VoIP on a managed
enterprise or SP network
• TDM – Time Division Multiplexing;
traditional telephony
• PSTN – Public Switched Telephone
Network
• Voice Gateway – terminates PSTN
trunks and converts voice from TDM
to IP
Why Care? Experts Stress Need for
Convergence Plan
“Voice over IP is an inevitable part of your call center
technology infrastructure. It brings significant change
to technology deployment, operations, and support, and
thus has organizational implications for the IT/Telecom
department as well. 2003 is the year when call centers
need to get a plan together for the migration to VoIP. Not
everyone will implement VoIP in 2003, but if you don’t
have a plan, you risk making short term investments that
don’t fit your long term needs, and not being ready when
the time is right for VoIP.”
Lori Bocklund, Vanguard Communications
Why Care?
Growth of IP Contact Centers
• In 2005 there
will be almost
14,000 IParchitected
contact centers
in the US
• By 2005, 67%
of US contact
centers will use
an IP-ACD
Why Care? Advantages of IP
• Location
independence
–Locate agents and
worker anywhere
• Support multiple
channels
–Voice, e-mail, Web,
fax, video
• Rapid deployment of
new applications
• Deploy and maintain
one network
Why Care? Business Benefits
• Enhances customer service
–Call-by-call routing, dynamic content to queued
callers, screen pop of caller data, multi-channel
contact
• Single set of business rules; single point of
administration for Contact Center
• IP architecture
–Location independence, rapid deployment of
new applications, deploy and maintain a single
network
• Preserves the value of existing technology
investments - compatible with legacy Call Center
technology allowing a smooth migration to IP
Reconstructing Call Centers on IP
Traditional Switch/ACD
Business Applications
Call center application
IVR, Q Point,
Announcement Board
Contact processing
IP Environment
Recording/Logging, CRM,
etc.
Call Center Application
Premise-based or hosted
Contact management
Ethernet LAN Switch
Voice-enabled
Router or Gateway
Call Flow in an IP Contact Center
Routing/Contact
Management/CTI
IP-IVR/
IP-Queue
Manager
V
IP Voice
CallManager
TDM Voice
Call Control
CTI Data
Voice Customer
Agent Phones
Pure IP Telephony vs. “Hybrid”
• Pure IP Telephony
– End to end IP, from Gateway to IP Phone
– Single network for data and voice
– Simplified administration
– IP phone applications
– Remote agents
– New site implementation speed
• Hybrid
– IP transport; typically TDM to the phone
– Advantage of delaying swap-out of digital
phone sets
– Still manage two networks
– No real architecture change
The Customer Interaction Network
• Single, Cost-effective Network
• Availability & Resiliency via
Web Apps
Routing Logic, CTI,
& Reporting Engine
Clustering
• Global, Enterprise-wide
Scalability
• Any Application Supported
Anywhere
Agents
• Integral Web Application
IP WAN
Support
CRM
CRM
Internet
PSTN
Telephony
Application
Gateway
Speech-enabled
Self-Service Apps
Telephony
Software
Five Key Factors in Deciding to
“Go IP”
• End of Life, End of Lease
• Multiple sites
• “Off shore” sites or outsourcing
• Significant branch office presence
• Multi-channel contact or “universal
queue”
Business Value
This Call May Be Recorded
… for more than Quality Purposes
Customer
Experience
Management
(CEM)
Business
Performance
Management
(BPM)
Quality
Monitoring
Compliance &
Dispute Resolution
you have to
you want to
Traditional Telephony Recording
Methods
Recorder
Extension Side
Service
Observe
Trunk Side
Calls Info
Database
Application
Server
(optional)
VoIP Recording Methods
• Two major methods serve today for
VoIP recording
– (Passive) Packet sniffing
– Traditional Recording:
• Trunk-side recording
• Observation methods
Media Stream
passively “sniffed”
along IP Path (using
network port
mirroring)
IP Telephony
Server
VoIP Recorder
Agents / Traders
PSTN
V
IP WAN
Router/
Gateway
Network
Switch
IP Phones
VoIP Recording Methods
• Two major methods serve today
for VoIP recording
– (Passive) Packet sniffing
– Traditional Recording:
• Trunk-side recording
• Observation methods
The recorder taps the
E1/T1 Trunks between
the Central Office and
the PABX
Trunk-side Traditional
Recorder
IP-enabled
PABX
Agents / Traders
PSTN
E1/T1 Trunks
IP Phones
VoIP Recording Methods
• Two major methods serve today
for VoIP recording
– (Passive) Packet sniffing
– Traditional Recording:
• Trunk-side recording
• Observation methods
The recorder connects directly to
the PABX to obtain the audio
Dedicated-Trunk
Traditional Recorder
IP-enabled
PABX
Agents / Traders
PSTN
E1/T1 Trunks
IP Phones
VoIP vs. Traditional Recording
• Rapid Implementation
– Simplified installation process requiring only network
configuration (no need to wire telephony cables)
• Seamless Scalability
– When telephony system grows, the recording system
scales up effortlessly using software licensing (no
need to add hardware)
– Flexibility to offer centralized recording for multiple
sites (depending on the configuration of the satellite
sites)
• Cost Effective Reliability
– Cost effective Fault Tolerant architecture (recording
mirroring could be achieved without any special
hardware)
– “Software Only” solution (no special telephony
boards) – reducing the number of hardware
components improves MTBF
VoIP vs. Traditional Recording – Cont’d
• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
– Reduced management cost - since no rewiring of
cables is needed for moves, adds and changes
• Open and Standards-based Architecture
– Using H.323, G.729a and other standards ensures
interoperability with other systems
• Advanced Applications
– Phone Integrated applications using Web/XML
Services directly from the phone set
– Stereo Recording - ability to record separately both
parties of the conversation (enabling speech analysis
like talk-over etc)
• Future Proofed
– Adding recording applications (QM, ROD etc) or
system add-on's requires only software configuration
– Switch-independent recording system (changing
telephony infrastructure doesn’t require changing the
recording system)
IP Phone Integrated Applications
• Using Web/XML Services
– Start Record (ROD - Record on Demand)
– Recent Calls Self Playback
– Tag Call with Business Data
– Send Calls by Email
– Keep Call
VoIP is Setting the Stage for
Advanced Applications
(Word-Spotting & Emotion Detection)
High emotion
levels
Spotted
words/phrases
NICE VoIP and Cisco - Case Study
• Financial Trading Company
– Risk associated with customer interactions is much
higher than that associated with automated trading alone
– Company needs to mitigate these risks and provide
for a way to resolve disputes quickly and easily
• Business Challenge
– Large corporate call center (450 seats) and smaller
remote call center (60 seats)
– Mixed environment – traditional telephony in the
corporate call center and IP telephony in the smaller
remote call center
• Business Solution
– Decided to implements Total Recording + Quality
Monitoring to verify the accuracy of customer
transactions, risk management and quality of service
– Purchased NiceUniverse + NICE VoIP
– NICE Storage Center for centralized archiving
Case Study – Implementation
Architecture
Corporate Call Center
PBX
Remote Call Center
VoIP
Calls
Recorder Database
Cisco Call
Manager Cisco ICM
CTI Link
Traditional
Calls
Recorder Database
CTI Link
Router
LAN
Network
SPAN port for
Gateway
Gateway
IP Phone
PSTN
IP Phone
Centralized
Storage
Server
IBM
Storage
Results of NICE VoIP & Cisco
Implementation
• Multiple disputes have already been settled using
NICE VoIP
• The bottom line
– Resolves common disputes quickly, creating
less animosity with customers
– Customer Satisfaction surveys up from 75% to
89%
– VoIP installation allows the customer to
leverage existing lines to reduce phone costs
(saving approximately $6000 per month in long
distance charges)
– Allows for central administration of phone
system
Thank you for listening