Voice is no longer enough for the call center because telephone calls, face time and postal letters are no longer the only ways that we communicate. Enter chat, e-mail, SMS, web forums, and suddenly the call center becomes the contact center.

We’re rapidly moving away from needing a telephone line and moving toward needing a unified communications solution that seamlessly integrates the various ways that we and consumers actually communicate. Voice still plays a role — an important role. Contact centers need to migrate from a voice-centered paradigm to a unified communications paradigm that embraces multiple modes of communication.

In that move to a unified communications paradigm, traditional automatic call distribution (ACD) systems are at a severe disadvantage because they are voice-centered and not IP-centered. IP is the foundation on which the many communication methods that compose unified communications rest.

This is why contact centers are moving toward SIP-based deployments.

Session initiation protocol (SIP) based contact centers bring a number of benefits. Not only do they allow for unified communications, an absolutely “must” for the modern contact center. SIP-based contact centers also bring other benefits, including the ability to leverage SIP trunking to add or remove phone lines so the contact center is never paying for too many lines or needing to invest in hardware to add more lines.

SIP can offer substantial cost savings, eliminating the need for local PSTN gateways, costly ISDN BRIs (Basic Rate Interfaces) or PRIs (Primary Rate Interfaces). It can turn national and international calls into local calls due to its IP-based nature.

It can deliver automatic call-routing and easily incorporate teleworkers. It can integrate with existing environments, applications and hardware. And it can be open-standard instead of forcing companies to lock in with a particular vendor.

There are many reasons why contact centers are moving to IP, and on May 29^th CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield will share why it has made the jump from its legacy ACD/PBX (News - Alert)-based contact center to a SIP-based contact center.

High outages, high maintenance costs, lack of flexibility, lack of end-to-end high availability and complex upgrades were some of the key reasons why CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield made the switch, and CareFirst BCBC senior technical staff member Troy Ridgley will explain how the change has helped his company.

Angela Riordan, the director of solution marketing for Genesys (News - Alert), will lead the webinar, which starts at 2pm EST on Wednesday, May 29. Click on the link to register for the webinar on SIP in the contact center. Registration comes with a complimentary OVUM whitepaper, “Prepare Contact Centers for the Future With SIP.”