Go Back"Getting Unified Communications right from the start"
By Tony Butler, Chief Technology Officer, Intact Integrated Services
Only this week the BBC's Breakfast News ran another story about just how unhappy UK consumers are with the service that organisations provide though their customer contact centres. Amidst all the doom and gloom two interesting points were raised: first that the IT and telephony within call centres just aren't communicating; and secondly that companies need to invest more in the joined-up technologies that can help support a more satisfactory level of customer service.
While standalone solutions can help to improve the customer experience, it is clear that organisations still operating around a traditional telephony infrastructure are starting to feel the limitations, particularly when the requirement is to evolve the call centre into a more outward-facing customer interaction network.
That's where a more consistent customer contact approach, based on Unified Communications (UC), can help in supporting organisations as they respond to changing business requirements. According to one recent US research study, organisations using IP-based unified communications applications saved an average of 32 minutes per day just by being able to connect with team members more efficiently, while for mobile professionals typical time savings of 40 minutes per day could be achieved when a UC infrastructure was in place.
At Intact Integrated Services we've been working to support Cisco's partners in the implementation of solutions based on Cisco's Unified Contact Centre Enterprise technology. UCCE is a very powerful approach that allows organisations to seamlessly integrate their inbound and outbound voice communications with Internet applications such as real-time chat, Web collaboration and e-mail. Because it's underpinned by Unified Communications, it has the potential to dramatically improve the customer experience - through agents being able to support interactions across multiple channels, sharing contacts to the most appropriate resources anywhere within the extended business, or by managing interactions based on almost any customer attribute.
UCCE has enormous potential, but it's also an Advanced Technology and for many Cisco partners there are considerable risks in taking on such potentially complex projects. Successful implementations of solutions such as UCCE are always about far more than just the technology, particularly with UCCE's service oriented architecture approach encouraging the integration of previously disparate contact centre processes. That's why we've built up a specialist IPCC practice with all the expertise and skills needed to support all aspects of a UCCE solution, from initial ITIL-based project and services management, through initial design and SOA application integration to the provision of a major Unified Communications solution.
Key UC project issues to look out for
Now that our IPCC practice has successfully engaged on a number of UC projects, we thought it might be useful to highlight some of the key issues that organisations need to look out for when starting off on a UC project.
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Don't underestimate your company's existing communications culture - it's important to understand how your staff communicate with customers and each other before determining your own UC infrastructure
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Get some UC project champions on board - any next generation communications project will inevitably mean change, and it will be important to have some key users in place who can accelerate employee acceptance as well as support the project our IPCC practice now worked on a number of UC projects
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Prepare your environment - you'll need to get some of the core building blocks in place, get a single authorative directory as a source of contacts, make sure it will be able to support your Corporate IM, that your PCs all have the right spec for new UC software, and that you've got the right bandwidth and quality of service to support your network
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Make the right architecture choices - are you going to go for a distributed or a centralised architecture - many UC technology solutions rely on real time protocols and that can place serious demands on your network
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Assess your security requirements - SOA is a great integration approach, but when applications are asked to integrate in ways that they never have before then it raises serious security issues that need to be addressed right from the start. You've got to use all of your existing security functionality, and also make sure you've got the same standards in place for remote users such as home-working agents or mobile experts
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Find ways to maximise enterprise integration - today the enterprise is the contact centre, it's important to explore every opportunity to connect your UC-enabled contact centre with all the other parts of the business that feature customer touch-points
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Ensure that you've got enterprise grade project management driving you UC implementation - UC programmes are wide-ranging and can impact many different parts of the organisation. It's essential to use a serious project management methodology such as Prince 2 to make sure that you can take advantage of all the processes, tools, templates and technologies that can help. You've also got to take any ISO standards or ITIL initiatives into consideration - done wrong, a Unified Communications programme can easily derail your hard-earned certifications
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Don't overlook your support infrastructure - the long term success of any Unified Communications project depends on its stability going forward. There are no short cuts here, so insist on contact centre SLAs, think about whether you need 24x7 support, make sure you've got third level support in place, and take advantage of some of the latest software-based remote management and reporting capabilities.
Keep on innovating
UC solutions such as UCCE can be challenging to implement well, but it is an advanced technology and it's now becoming clear that the operational benefits that result from UC programmes within the customer service environment more than justify the project costs.
The UC issues we've outlined are essential to get right, but they're also important in making sure that organisations have a high quality communications infrastructure in place that is both secure and reliable but also flexible enough to support future innovations for years to come. UC can prove challenging, but we're convinced that it's the right choice for an increasing number of companies and the technology partners who work with them.
