BY RICH TEHRANI

When I say a home page is a virtual storefront, I don’t mean it’s just a display window. I mean it’s the front door, too. After all, if you were running a store, you could have the most attractive window display in town, but you’d soon go out of business if you forgot to install a front door. Yet many Web sites, for all intents and purposes, stop at the window dressing. Then, the companies behind these sites complain that Web commerce just doesn’t work. If a company’s Web site is to work, it must support customer interaction. For instance, anything a customer can accomplish via the phone or any other communications medium should be possible via the Web. After all, the Web will soon overtake the phone as the primary means of contacting companies. Of course, customers will still want to talk to call center agents, but they’ll reach these agents via the Web. Eventually, the Web will consolidate every means of customer interaction imaginable.

AUTOMATING CUSTOMER INTERATION: A BRIEF HISTORY
The Distant Past: Little Or No Automation: Once, long ago, customers who wanted to contact a company had to place a phone call, and possibly stumble across a rude operator or a long, pointless auto-attendant greeting lacking an option for human agent transfer.

The Recent Past: Evolution Of Two Kinds Of Automation: First, there’s agent-oriented automation, as in formal call centers. Second, there’s agent-free automation, as in self-service IVR applications. Most companies establish a formal call center when they reach a certain level of telephone customer contact. In fact, CTI was invented in the call center, where productivity gains spread over a multitude of agents quickly amortized investments in expensive CTI hardware and software linking mainframes to PBXs. In the area of agent-free customer interactions, IVR systems offered bank balances and stock quotes, and fax-on-demand products allowed customers to help themselves to documentation. As Web access becomes more universal, and as issues concerning security and fraud are resolved, the Web will most probably replace existing agent-free forms of information delivery. It will be common for Web sites to include search tools and indexes that will help customers track down information.

The Present: Integrating All Kinds Of Automation: Many of our readers have call centers, where screen pops, predictive dialing, and other agent-oriented CTI applications are well known. Further, most of our readers have Web sites, which will soon supersede agent-free CTI applications, such as fully automated fax-on-demand. Why not combine these two types of CTI? Why not use your home page both as an agent-free customer interaction platform and as a gateway to your call center? This approach makes a lot of sense. Consider, for example, that some customers will want more information than a company can provide online. Also, some customers are uncomfortable with technology-only options, and prefer to ask another human being for information. Such customers would love being able to switch from a Web site to a call center at will.

CUSTOMER CONTACT CENTERS
Call centers are evolving into multichannel customer contact centers. These contact centers can field customer inquiries via any communications medium, and respond via the same or any other communications medium.

Call Me Buttons: By including a call me button, a Web site gives customers the option of simply clicking on the button to reach a live agent. Technology allows for two variations on this theme: 1) The customer clicks on a call me button, launching an Internet telephony connection. 2) The customer enters a phone number, scheduling a call back for when the line is free. The first option requires the customer to have a multimedia computer. Otherwise, a call back solution is appropriate. Here, the customer may have but a single phone line, which means he or she would have to disconnect from the Internet before the call back. With such a customer, an agent is unable to push Web pages onto the customer’s screen. Web push technology allows an agent to synchronize their Web page with the customer’s Web page. The agent can then traverse the Web site, all the while pushing relevant information to the customer. The agent can answer any questions in real time, while sharing a visual point of reference with the customer. It is possible to offer both choices to your customers, but the decision should be based on the type of audience you have (consumer or business) and the level of service you wish to provide. Corporate customers are more likely than consumers to have separate Internet and telephone connections.

Multimedia Contact Centers: Customers are beginning to rely on e-mail to access vast corporate information archives. Thus, agents need the skills to answer questions by e-mail. Eventually, agents will need to handle video-based conversations. Much the same way that unified messaging allows a company to unite disparate messaging systems, such as voice mail, e-mail, fax, and video, multimedia call center products will allow agents to handle various communication types. Once these communication types are consolidated on a common system, management will become easier. Take, for example, the impatient customer who sends an e-mail with a complicated question and then calls with the same question. One agent must take the call, and another must answer the e-mail. Multimedia call center products will allow companies to recognize and handle such redundancy appropriately.

CONCLUSION
CTI technology has allowed companies to take advantage of the Web in ways that allow customers to retain the warmth of personal contact while gaining access to huge stores of information. The Web is a company’s virtual storefront, and as such, companies need to realize the vital part a Web site plays in customer care and contact.

Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani (rtehrani@tmcnet.com)
Publisher, CTI magazine

The Shows You’ve Been Waiting For…

For the computer-telephony integration (CTI) industry, success begins with education. For without education, the people who make up the industry — the end users, the resellers, the distributors, the developers, the technology providers — may overlook the opportunities before them. That’s where CTI EXPO comes in. CTI EXPO is dedicated to education, to providing objective, unbiased information and insights on the emerging CTI industry. CTI EXPO is the event to attend if you need to make sense of the veritable torrent of new products and services being generated by the CTI industry. From Internet telephony, to PC-based PBXs, to unified messaging — and many other examples of voice, data, and video convergence — CTI EXPO gives people who are serious about CTI what they need most: serious education.

For more information, Call 800-243-6002 or 203-852-6800 Ext. 0 Or Visit Our Website at www.ctiexpo.com

The Outsourcing Option

Call center outsourcing done through call center and telemarketing service agencies allows a company to outsource the functions of its call center to another company. Recently, many service agencies have begun to ramp up the technology in their centers allowing them to handle e-mail and Web call back buttons. Our customer service department will be happy to supply you with information on these outsourcers if you are interested in inquiring about their services. Please call 203-852-6800 for more information.

Our CommUnity Hot Spot

CTI magazine will the sponsor an IP Telephony Hot Spot booth at the upcoming CommUnity show, to be held in conjunction with Networld + Interop in Atlanta, Georgia October 8–10. The Hot Spot will showcase vendors who provide end user telephony applications, as well as vendors who provide Internet telephony gateways. (The former include as Intel, Microsoft, White Pine, Natural MicroSystems, Vocaltec, and Netspeak; the latter, Array Telecom, Vienna Systems, Micom, Vocaltec, and InterTel.) Vendors will demonstrate voice over IP products while simultaneously educating attendees on underlying technologies and emerging standards. Attendees will be able to make free phone calls around the world and gauge voice quality for themselves. The Interop organization launched CommUnity after it completed research showing that 65 percent of computer professionals are involved with integrated voice and data applications. Also, 88 percent of respondents said they wanted to learn about Internet telephony and voice and data standards.

For more information, contact the show’s organizers. Call 800-962-6513 or visit www.interop.com.