Analysis on Several Problems of deploying Unified Communication

A major feature of deploying Unified Communication is the application in the call center. Call Center is the first user of communication. Now, let's analyze several issues related to the deployment of Unified Communication. In this article, we hope to help you understand the relevant knowledge. Whether you are using unified communication or preparing to deploy Unified Communication, we will sort out this article for your reference.

Enterprises that have set up a call center are urgently deploying unified communications because they realize that their investment will win huge returns in terms of the number of customers and production efficiency. A foreign financial magazine interviewed Mike Hollier, chief technology officer of Psytechnics, who specializes in IP speech and Video Performance Management and call quality evaluation.

1. What do you think is the development trend of Unified Communication Technology Development and call center deployment? What is the driving force?

Hollier: In general, despite the slow development, Unified Communication continues to move forward. The most typical is the penetration rate of IP phones (VoIP. We have noticed that more and more large enterprises have implemented remote rendering solutions, and employees have also installed desktop video conferencing clients. At the same time, enterprises have also significantly increased the deployment of IP-layer video conferencing. As more companies and employees want to work remotely, they find that Unified Communication provides a good real-time remote experience to help them contact their companies and colleagues. Similarly, the deployment of Unified Communication improves the call transmission capability to help remote agents maintain their "Attendance Status.

As more and more enterprises integrate their IP Phone/VoIP systems into desktop applications, IP Phone/VoIP is on the rise. Although the penetration rate is still less than 100%, it is developing towards this aspect. Once the budget and resource obstacles are eliminated, this momentum will grow more rapidly.

In addition, IP video conferencing, remote presentation, and enterprise broadcast video communication are becoming the mainstream in enterprise communication combinations. This is mainly driven by three main factors: energy conservation objectives, travel expenses and time, and the development trend of remote office.

2. Is the speed of Unified Communication accelerated or slowed down in the current economic background? Why?

Hollier: In the current fluctuating economic situation, although some enterprises are reluctant to adopt unified communications, this is not a problem for the development of call centers. Under such conditions, we still see the continuous and stable growth of Unified Communication deployment. Since call center staff handle various types of incoming calls, they need to access more applications and solutions to effectively respond to various questions.

Deploying Unified Communication can effectively meet the needs of callers (such as contact status, skill levels of agents, and available resources, it is also advantageous for callers and companies. The caller's problem was quickly solved, and the call center easily achieved their goal of "first-question solution". Their company's reputation and customer satisfaction were also improved.

3. What challenges have Unified Communication encountered during popularization, installation, and application? Use some solutions and examples to illustrate how to overcome these difficulties.

Hollier: most service providers and enterprise organizations acknowledge that after Unified Communication is deployed, real-time applications encounter a series of operation and support difficulties, but realize that these are often too late. If you encounter quality problems in traditional applications (such as email or CRM systems), it will cause a lot of inconvenience and reduce customer satisfaction. However, if you encounter quality problems in real-time voice calls, for example, when the phone has an echo, voice distortion, or too many background noises, it is not just that the customer is not satisfied, A user often hangs up and starts a call again. These real-time applications tend to integrate more fast and emotional interaction functions, and different methods must be used to support customers' real-time application needs before the customer is deployed.

Currently, the biggest challenge is the lack of available tools to manage users' calls. Existing tools usually focus only on network, infrastructure, and network QoS (Service Quality) indicators, rather than on managing user experience or trusting in this new technology. With the installation of Unified Communication, we encountered another challenge: the customer lacked sufficient trust in the test run. As it cannot prove the ability to deploy unified communications to provide reliable real-time transmission services, there is not enough evidence to demonstrate the feasibility of such a network.

One example: a mainstream commercial bank has a plan to deploy more than 700 IP Phone nodes. After completing the first 10 nodes, the project had to be stopped because the user complained about the quality of voice calls. The user cannot hear clearly and is not satisfied with the service level. However, the IT operations team did not notice these issues because their management tools were always green and the reporting project was proceeding as expected.

This example highlights a typical problem: there are different opinions and expectations between users and IT. In fact, the IP Phone application is not functioning properly when the network is designed to run. Incorrect phone Access Gateway, incompatible headphones, and mismatched codecs all seem to be a normal network management tool.

More and more enterprises recognize that QoS alone is far from enough, so they recognize the importance of Quality of Experience (QoE, Quality of Experience. High-quality QoE and related network QoS, as well as efficient operation and support capabilities are crucial for IP Phone and video conferencing users.

4. What is the future direction of Unified Communication in the call center?

Hollier: in the future, the Unified Communication Application in the call center will give customers greater mobility and a wider range of services. By deploying Unified Communication, you can use multiple multimedia services to contact call centers, forums, wikis, and blogs. In addition, it will provide agents with greater technical flexibility, so that future electricity can be more reliably routed to specific departments or personnel based on specific content.

All in all, people who are interested in and have adopted Unified Communication are emerging. According to the Aberdeen study, 59% of respondents who use VoIP are switching to adopt a network video conferencing solution, of which 36% are using real-time presentation and 34% are deploying a unified messaging solution. In addition, 40% of organizations are deploying solutions that can simultaneously manage VoIP, video, and unified communication applications. As the penetration rate of unified communications increases, call centers are tracking customer needs in an orderly manner.