The power of IP
NextiraOne’s unparalleled expertise in IP, voice and contact centre applications, coupled with our complete service portfolio, can help you make the most of the promise of IP
IP (Internet Protocol) and open standards are revolutionising the world of business communications, especially with SIP technology. In the contact centre environment, IP is an enabling technology that can significantly reduce operating costs and increase the flexibility of solutions.
Every NextiraOne IP-based contact centre brings:
- Increased market share through improved customer experiences
- Flexible and distributed architecture
- Simpler maintenance and management
- Lower TCO and a proven ROI
- Protected technology investments
- Reduced costs
IP Contact Centres Explained
Within IP contact centres, all communications channels (voice, email, fax, web and video) are carried as data over the same, single Internet Protocol-based enterprise network. When a telephone call arrives from the Public Switching Network (PSN), the incoming voice signal is transformed via a gateway into data packets, and sent to the IP network. Similarly, the outgoing voice signal is transformed from data packets into circuit switching data at the gateway and sent back to the PSN.
Some of the benefits of implementing an IP contact centre are:
- Instead of separate telephony and data networks, you need only one. This not only cuts in half the amount of cabling required, it also greatly reduces network management costs. Moreover, it enables great savings in moves, adds and changes (MACs) of agent positions. When an employee moves desks, he/she can simply unplug the IP phone, and the system will automatically route calls to its new location.
- It is much easier and less expensive to interconnect a company’s head office with its regional and branch offices, providing every user across the enterprise with the same voice and data functionality. This is particularly useful in a contact centre environment, where it allows load balancing. When one contact centre is overstretched through unexpected volumes of traffic or staff illness, excess calls can be rerouted to another centre over the company’s virtual private network (VPN).
- It is also much easier and less expensive to interconnect company premises with remote users, usually those working from home. Again, this is especially useful for contact centres, because a centre that is overstretched can quickly bring agents online who are at home. Once logged on, queued calls will automatically be routed to the worker at home, where he/she will have exactly the same experience and information on-screen as in the centre itself.
- An IP contact centre is better suited to handling multimedia channels. Internet Protocol means that all traffic (including voice, email, chat and video) is delivered to the centre as data packets. This provides a uniform way of managing interactions, regardless of which channel the customer chooses to use.
There is little that an IP contact centre can do that a traditional TDM-based centre cannot do just as well. However, CTI [1] is inherently easier and cheaper when a solution uses only data packets (as an IP contact centre does) rather than a mixture of data and voice traffic. More importantly, TDM contact centres use expensive applications based on proprietary standards, whereas IP contact centres employ open standards applications, which are usually significantly cheaper to buy, more flexible, and easier to maintain.
