Latest Patent Highlights Direction of the 'Networked' Contact Center

Recently, cloud communications and collaboration provider 8x8 was awarded a patent for the “Networked Contact Center.” This highlights that the direction of the contact center is moving away from just incoming and outgoing calls and toward a more multichannel, interconnected customer service experience that will increasingly include agents with different specialties and in different locations.

First, the patent itself.

It covers a networked contact center that includes multiple platforms to host multiple tenants. An example of what the patent covers is receiving a message associated with one of the tenants and identifying one or more of the platforms associated with the message. The patent also includes the networked contact center platform being able to access a data location that is both associated with the tenant and shared by two or more tenants.

What this signals is that interconnected systems and skills-based routing could be more important than ever in the contact center.

The contact center first of all needs to encompass and harness more data. More data on solutions, but especially more data from the customer. To deliver a good customer experience, contact centers need to know who their agents are talking with and what matters to them. This takes data and connections with various contact center systems.

With the rise of multiple channels, contact centers need more than ever to have agents with different skill sets and capabilities—and the ability to spot them and route customer interactions to the most appropriate agent.

Having the right agent pool also increasingly means that the contact center is pulling together a workforce that is geographically dispersed. No longer is it necessary to have all agents in the same room. With hosted contact center solutions, it now is quite possible to have agents scattered across the country or even the world. This can ensure that the right employees are always available.

The 8x8 patent certainly shows that the contact center is on the move.

When I first worked at a contact center more than a decade ago, being an agent sure was different than it is today. But so is the contact center itself.

And with this latest patent, the change doesn’t look to be abating any time soon.

Edited by Alisen Downey