June 1999

BY RICH TEHRANI,
GROUP PUBLISHER, TMC

[click here to go to CTI EXPO fall '99 sidebar]

It was bound to happen…it seems that every advancement the call center market has enjoyed in the last two decades is finding a parallel in the world of e-commerce. The most recent manifestation of call center technology finding its way into the world of e-commerce is e-mail routing software - e-mail routing is similar to call routing and many software packages allow your call center to deal with calls, e-mail and fax in a similar fashion.

Call routing technologies became essential when call centers were flooded with calls they simply could not handle. Beyond that, agents couldn't possibly know how to answer every question a caller would ask and, in fact, agents with areas of expertise were wasting their talents when they took calls unrelated to their experience. Enter call routing products, such as ACDs, that allowed callers the ability to specify why they were calling and subsequently route themselves to a particular agent. Of course, by now, we all know that e-mail routing software does just about the same thing...the e-mail equivalent of call routing software.

But wait a minute! Is e-mail routing really the e-commerce equivalent of call routing? Perhaps not. Indeed, when you think about it, calls are routed in real-time and e-mail is not. A two-hour response to e-mail is considered good…these are certainly not equivalents. The purpose of both products is the same, however, as e-mail and call routing software both allow you to serve each individual customer's needs more effectively.

The e-commerce corollary to call routing or real-time routing would have to take place while your customers are browsing your site. You should be able to determine a customer's priority level based on where they are on your site or even who they are. The most obvious application of such a product would be for an online investing company. A great deal of these companies' bandwidth is dedicated to people getting quotes, checking their portfolios and researching. The downside of so many customers on online investing sites is that those people trying to buy and sell stocks in real-time have to compete for bandwidth and server time with hoards of other people requesting information that is far from time sensitive. Of course, you don't have to be an online investing company to have these types of problems. Imagine how many e-commerce sites have complex graphics and videos on them to provide a rich environment for their visitors. Typically, streaming video sucks up available bandwidth and computing power from other applications running on your server, such as those devoted to selling your products. This is a definite problem that needs solving.

Enter Hewlett-Packard, which recently introduced me to a product that addresses the need for Web sites to provide various levels of Quality of Service (QoS). HP aptly refers to this product as WebQoS ; in fact, the release they showed me is version 2. This version allows for three separate priority queues and manages the allocation of Web resources accordingly. It currently works only on HP's UNIX flavor known as HP-UX and will eventually find its way to Windows NT.

According to independent research that HP shared with me, 40 percent of online customers have left Web sites due to poor performance. Obviously, none of us wants to lose customers when there is such a simple way to assure that your best customers are receiving adequate Web service. One of the most interesting features of HP's WebQoS is that service levels can be defined based on where a person is browsing or on their customer information.

HP tells me that WebQoS can actually pay for itself by allowing your existing equipment to deliver better, more predictable service levels to all Web customers. The alternative, of course, is to keep adding servers until you've built vast server farms that are obviously expensive to acquire and maintain.

The most blatant similarity between call routing software and WebQoS type products is what happens if you don't have them. If a call center didn't have an ACD, it would have to have as many agents as its greatest number of simultaneous calls during peak calling times. An ACD allows call centers to queue up callers based on the priority of the callers and allows the call center to save on furniture costs, computers and, of course, agents. If your Web site has no WebQoS type product, you are forced to constantly upgrade your servers to accommodate peak server volume. With WebQoS, you can guarantee peak performance to your important users without having to upgrade your servers. We at TMC are painfully aware of peak loads on our servers affecting our customers' browsing experience. The month prior to the last two CTI EXPOs taxed our servers to the hilt. This is the third show in a row where we were forced to upgrade our servers the week after the show. We will certainly explore a WebQoS type of product for our Web site. If you suspect your Web site is bogged down, you should, too. This magazine is entering its eighteenth year of existence and during that time we have witnessed many innovations that have allowed call centers to provide their customers with better and better customer service. It is wonderful to see two decades of customer service innovation in the call center market come to the world of e-commerce in a matter of a few years. WebQoS seems to be the ultimate embodiment of the e-commerce ACD.

As the call center industry is constantly in a state of flux with new technologies introduced seemingly every day, we here at TMC will introduce several new features at CTI EXPO Fall '99 in Los Vegas, December 7-9, and also bring back several favorites from CTI EXPO Spring '99, all designed to keep you up-to-date on the latest industry developments.

New conference tracks to be featured at CTI EXPO Fall '99 will include: Call Center Solutions '99, which will focus on both new call center technology and human resources issues; Internet Telephony '99, which will cover the exploding Internet telephony marketplace; and Next-Gen Services '99, which will cover the deployment of CTI and Internet telephony solutions in the public network.

The ever popular, noncommercial Learning Centers at CTI EXPO Fall '99 will feature six new technologies:

• CT Media: Focusing on the Microsoft/Dialogic/ECTF client/server, open systems standard.
  
• Development/Testing: Products like CTI boards, application generators, and Hammer and Ameritec testing products.
  
• LINUX Telephony: All the usual (and unusual) CTI products running on the LINUX operating system.
  
• Next-Gen Call Center Technology: Covering Web-enabled and integrated call center solutions.
  
• Enhanced Services/Network CTI: Web-based unified messaging, follow-me services, broadcast Internet fax, etc.
  
• Wireless CTI: Looking at products that give you full CTI functionality on the go!

Also to be found on the floor the exhibit hall will be two more new features and three that make a return appearance from the Spring show: the Next-Gen Telco in a Booth will feature best-of-breed products and solutions necessary for creating and running a next-gen telco; the CTI Venture Fair will offer promising startup or start-up phase companies the opportunity to make a short pitch about their product or service to a select group of venture capitalists, investment bankers and financial analysts; Consultants' Corner will provide attendees with the opportunity to gain insight from leading industry analysts and consultants in the fields of call centers, sales and marketing, CTI and Internet telephony; CellIT's Live, Blended Multimedia Call Center will again be making and placing calls from the show floor to demonstrate the latest in call center technology; and ConvergeNET, which will be a working next-gen IP telephony network right on the show floor, where vendors will demonstrate the compatibility of their products with those from other vendors.

All of these new features are just part of our quest to provide you with the best forum to help keep you prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.