Solutions - HIPCC

IP Communications can increase your organization's competitive advantage and deliver measurable return on investment (ROI) by improving efficiency, boosting productivity, and enhancing customer loyalty

Hosted IPCC

Using IP Communications, IST offers comprehensive systems of powerful, enterprise-class solutions—including IP telephony, unified communications, IP video and audio conferencing, and contact center. The solutions are based on AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data). Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) Hosted Edition is an integral component of both Cisco and IST IP Communications systems. It delivers a comprehensive solution that enables customer contact and customer service.

A strategic platform based on Cisco's IPCC Hosted platform together with IST's integration prowess enables our customers (and their customers in turn) to move into the next phase of customer contact offerings — the Customer Interaction Network. The Customer Interaction Network is a distributed IP-based customer service infrastructure that comprises a continuously evolving suite of innovative, multi-channel services and customer relationship management applications. These services and applications provide enhanced responsiveness and streamlined customer exchanges to help your organization deliver superior customer service. A Customer Interaction Network extends customer service capabilities across the entire organization, giving your business a more integrated and collaborative approach to customer satisfaction.

The Hosted IPCC is suitable for both enterprise customers and service providers. For service providers, the IPCC Hosted creates a new, high-margin service revenue stream for incumbent providers as well as new service carriers. The service provider hosts the contact center infrastructure software—which is shared by one or by multiple business customers—in the service provider central office or data center. Subscribing business customers can have IP infrastructures, TDM infrastructures, or a combination of the two. For the enterprise customer with multiple branch offices or divisions the value is a centralized contact center infrastructure with the ability to offer services to its various divisions or satellite offices. The solution includes a suite of integrated services that can be introduced all at once or incrementally, depending on ROI goals. These include:

• Virtual call center—Calls are routed to contact center agents independent of their location, a service especially appealing to businesses with branch offices or home agents

• Network routing with computer telephony integration—Network-based ACD is combined with computer telephony integration (CTI) services

• Network IVR—IVR functionality is located in the network to provide information to callers or to collect information from callers before they speak with a live agent

• Intelligent call routing—Calls are routed between contact centers based on call context information (dialed number and caller ID), agent availability, and customer information from databases

HIPCC Enterprise

•  Reduces capital expenditure and risk — Businesses that subscribe to IPCC Hosted services trade high capital expenditure for predictable monthly operational expenditure. They also avoid technology obsolescence and the risk of purchasing and operating expensive and complicated equipment. And because the software is maintained at the service provider location, business users gain advantages of feature upgrades immediately, without having to purchase or install them.

• Differentiates service —By retaining “call context” as the customer is transferred among agents—even between different locations or companies—the enterprise can differentiate itself through superior customer service. For example, the information a customer has already supplied by phone or Web interface to purchase one product or service can be transferred to another part of the contact center when the customer initiates another purchase or interaction.

•  Eliminates integration burden —Like service providers, enterprises that take advantage of the IPCC Hosted service eliminate the need to purchase components from multiple vendors and integrate equipment and services for PBX, ACD, IVR, CTI, CRM, and the phone company.

• Allows control of network resources —A unique benefit of the Cisco IPCC Hosted service is that the enterprise can control certain network resources—for example, assigning agents to skill groups and defining routing based on number called or caller-entered digits such as account numbers. What's more, all functions can be controlled from a single operating interface, reducing training and support requirements.

• Simplifies support —The service provider provides support for all contact center applications, eliminating the hassle of working with multiple vendors.

• Reduces network management costs —By subscribing to the IPCC Hosted service, the enterprise eliminates the need to support and operate separate TDM and IP networks, each requiring specialized resources. It also reduces the costs of hiring and training specialized contact center technology resources to manage complex, arcane Call Center technology such as IVR systems.

• Reduces long distance/toll charges —With IP Intelligent Networking, the IPCC Hosted service can trap toll-free calls local to the caller, convert the call to IP, and provide voice treatment—all without incurring typical toll charges. The reason: the call is never actually sent across the PSTN.

HOSTED IPCC BENEFITS

The Hosted IPCC provides measurable economic benefits and business advantages for the service provider and its customers as well as large enterprise contact centers.

HIPCC Service Provider

• High value service with immediate impact —Delivers a rapid return on investment. For early profitability, the service provider can offer one or two services. initially such as an intelligent call routing and Network IVR—and then, after they become profitable, offer additional services such as virtual call center and Web-enabled call center. For maximum market impact, service providers can go to market with a complete suite of networked contact center services

• Attract new customers, reduce churn —Contact center operations are business-critical to many companies. Once companies successfully outsource their contact center infrastructure to a service provider, they are likely to remain loyal to that service provider.

• Transition to more efficient converged IP-based service delivery model —Offers business subscribers a migration path to IP—Service providers are encouraging their business customers to migrate from TDM to IP so that they can take advantage of converged voice/data services, such as IP Centrex, Managed IP PBX, and Multiservice VPNs. Because the Cisco IPCC Hosted solution integrates with both IP and TDM networks, it facilitates the transition. The service provider's customers can continue to leverage their investments in legacy systems while migrating to IP architecture. When service providers offer the IPCC Hosted service, their customers can adopt VoIP one step at a time—for example, first transitioning a single contact center or subscribing to a network-based service such as Intelligent Contact Routing, Network IVR, or CTI. At each step they strengthen their relationship with the service provider.

• Creates an entry to offering new services —Many of the companies that take advantage of the IPCC Hosted Edition service offering are smaller organizations that would also benefit from data warehousing, storage networking, and CRM but are unable to afford it. Service providers can leverage the infrastructure they build for IPCC Hosted services to offer other high-value services, such as storage networking and hosted CRM, to the same customer base.
 
•  Reduces resource requirements —The service provider has the option to shift control of network-based resources to the customer, who can control attributes such as call treatment and assigning agents to skill groups. Customer control of certain aspects of the networked contact center reduces costs for both the service provider and the enterprise.
 
• Reduces network bandwidth —The Cisco IPCC Hosted Edition treats the entire IP network as intelligent switch, capable of trapping calls at the edge of the network, local to the caller. While this capability has existed for years for data traffic, it is brand new for voice traffic and gives the service provider a competitive advantage by reducing bandwidth needs.

• Greatly reduces integration costs —Until now, businesses with contact centers had to integrate numerous products from different vendors—an expensive task that postponed service introduction. The Cisco IPCC Hosted Edition provides ACD, PBX, IVR, Web interaction functionality, and is pre-integrated to support popular call-center applications, such as Workforce Management, Recording and Monitoring, and Wallboards. It is also pre-integrated with leading CRM products, including Siebel, E.piphany, Oracle, and PeopleSoft. By consolidating all contact center functions in a single platform, the Cisco IPCC Hosted solution reduces capital expenditure and IST's integration expenses and speeds time-to-market for the service offering. IST will not only provide the required integration of the Hosted IPCC but also any required backend development and integration.