The Internet has become an integral part of a business’s plan to create a global
presence. While this means that more people have the chance to look into a company, it
also means that a business has to create an effective communications plan.
Consumers are demanding more and faster ways to conduct business. But how can you be
sure that a consumer’s ability to contact an organization isn’t ahead of a
business’s ability to respond?
That’s where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products come in. Aspect
Telecommunications’ Customer Relationship Portal software is a multimedia customer
contact package for managing customer interactions. It leverages a flexible, open
architecture to combine data from disparate contact center entry points, including Web,
e-mail, and fax. The Customer Relationship Portal enables businesses to deliver a
consistent customer experience through one virtual place that connects customers with the
right enterprise resource, no matter how the customer chooses to contact the business.
“Businesses recognize that a successful CRM strategy is dependent on evolving from
the traditional telephone call center to a multimedia contact center that provides a
consistent face to the customer,” said James R. Carreker, Aspect’s chairman,
president and chief executive officer.
Using media-blending technology, the Customer Relationship Portal integrates previously
distributed, disconnected media, and shares customer data across all contacts, ensuring
that information collected through each customer interaction is immediately available to
an agent answering a customer inquiry, regardless of the contact medium.
Customers have several ways to contact a business, employing auto-response through
e-mail, self-service via the Web, or live interaction by clicking on a “call me”
button. Through real-time voice over IP (VoIP), the customer and the agent can communicate
through voice while simultaneously viewing the customer’s screen.
To reduce time to solution for a company’s end-to-end CRM implementation, the
Customer Relationship Portal meets an IT department’s requirement to quickly
integrate applications and solutions in the areas of media blending, data mart, customer
self service, front office applications, and workforce management, thus lowering the
custom integration costs required today.
The Customer Relationship Portal comes equipped with controls to connect to a range of
components including front-office databases and desktops from companies such as Vantive,
Clarify, and Siebel.
Aspect’s Customer Relationship Portal software runs on the Windows NT server,
supporting large-scale, mission-critical CRM applications in distributed environments. It
offers standard interface functionality to support multiple channels to merge voice, data,
and video. Pricing starts at $995 per simultaneous user and goes up to $5,000.
|
Software internationalization is the business of converting computer code,
documentation, interfaces, etc. into acceptable international formats. Whether the topic
is ASCII code vs. UNICODE or American icons vs. far-Eastern icons, it’s hard enough
to write software acceptable just for your own country. Now, with a new version of the
GlobalCall API, Dialogic is making impressive strides in the specialty field of CTI
internationalization.
GlobalCall is now in version 1.3, with version 2.0 due in beta later this year,
although more primitive versions of the software have been available since 1996. The
premise is simple: every country has its own set of telephony rules, and some countries
have multiple sets. Rather than writing versions of your software’s code for each
country where the software might possibly be used, developers instead write to the
GlobalCall API and specify which country’s rules to enable. The API is filled with
location-specific data acquired by Dialogic field engineers, and it handles the gruntwork
of making your software work as well in Afghanistan as it does in Zimbabwe.
But GlobalCall has a secondary purpose as well. Code written for it can be understood
across protocols, whether they are T1 or E1 ISDN, T1 or E1 CAS, or analog — a
flowchart would show the application on top, the GlobalCall API in the middle, and
Dialogic’s call control libraries, which talk to the hardware, on the bottom.
A TMC Labs engineer traveled to a Dialogic laboratory for a demonstration, where the
example on display was the “Talking NT SQL” software from Telephony Experts.
Talking NT is an application for building systems like debit cards, international
callback, prepaid wireless cards, and least-cost routing. In the example, a debit card
system makes a United States T1 call that connects to a Brazil R2 signal, and a European
ISDN call that connects to a United States wink start.
Telephony Experts engineers developed this system without ever visiting Europe or
Brazil, and they did it in less than 30 days using GlobalCall. Essentially, the software
allows you to focus on creative software development and concentrate less on the chore of
telephony coding.
Other valuable features of GlobalCall include the Protocol Developer’s Kit, or
PDK, which allows field engineers to customize any of the protocols or to make new ones;
support for Dialogic’s DM3 series of boards; and the ability to write to GlobalCall
in any programming language, as long as you convert the header files properly.
It’s also important to note that GlobalCall is not appropriate for companies that
design software for the largest enterprises or for specific call center suites or switches
— as the scalability requirements grow, and as the connection requirements become
more switch-centric, developers may not want to be as shielded from the hardware as the
GlobalCall abstraction layer requires.
Future versions (namely version 2.0) will add more advanced and supplemental call
control features, while version 1.3 includes mostly basic features. A users’ group is
also planned for the future.
The software is bundled with Dialogic’s “DNA” software and boards and
comes with four printed instruction manuals. One is a software reference for Windows NT
and Unix, which uses more than 50 tables and figures to cover 63 function calls and nine
data structures. This book also includes extensive coverage of how to develop an
application with GlobalCall, plus many sections of examples, related publications, error
codes, etc.
The next manual is a reference of country parameters. The list includes 19 choices:
Argentina R2, Australia R2, Austria E1, Belgium R2, Brazil R2, Chile R2, China R2, Finland
R2, France E1, India R2, Indonesia R2, Israel R2, Korea R2, Malaysia R2, Mexico R2, North
America analog, Singapore R2, Spain E1, and United States T1. Dialogic engineers limited
the available protocols to these 19 choices because they are the basis for most of the
world — they’ve determined that any new protocols will be based on one of these
19, but they’ve left the API open for new protocol additions as they evolve.
The remaining two books are “Technology User’s Guides” for ISDN and
E1/T1 (ICAPI) protocols. These manuals get into the specifics of programming for the API,
header files, resource allocations, debugging, etc.
In total, Dialogic provides approximately 700 pages of technical documentation, plus
additional data on the Web, plus release notes and other materials. The printed manuals
are excellent and well organized. They are as good as any CTI manuals we’ve seen, but
they’re not for mid-range users. Power users and serious programmers will love them.
A good example of GlobalCall’s power can be seen in Table 1.
Using GlobalCall to initiate and establish a call, a developer needs to make three
function calls: GC_Start, which activates the API and libraries; GC_Open, which
initializes the required resources; and GC_MakeCall, which initiates the call. But without
GlobalCall, the 23 steps in Table 2 would all be necessary. This is just
one small example of GlobalCall’s usefulness in the real world.
Meanwhile, version 2.0 will include digital interface card support; functions calls for
hold, retrieve, and transfer; improved call analysis; inbound call detection; SC routing
commands; and SS7 support. An even newer version will debut in mid-2000, featuring call
control library independence, Boardwatch administration, and support for SNMP, H.323, and
S.100.
GlobalCall is a serious programmer’s tool, and while it’s not for rookies who
may expect a more app-gen-like interface, it’s one way to accomplish big and
international successes from the comfort of your domestic office. We recommend giving it a
try.
|
TMCnet LOGIN
Webinars
