Network CTI: Delivering Intelligent Network Services
BY SETH HOMAYOON
Within the next 6 to 8 months, the leading carriers will introduce an array of advanced
network services. The new offerings will include virtual call centers; productivity
enhancements for Centrex users; and applications for improving customer interactions,
blending formal and informal call centers, and extending the resource pool of call centers
to professionals working at home. And these offerings are only the beginning. Other
advanced services will emerge as we witness the culmination of a convergence movement
comprising formerly distinct market forces and architectural frameworks — namely, the
convergence of enterprise computer telephony integration (ECTI) applications and advanced
intelligent network (AIN) services.
EVOLUTION OF ECTI AND AIN
A short history of AIN and ECTI underlines the symbiosis and eventual merging of these two
architectural frameworks. AIN’s beginnings can be traced to efforts on the part of
Local Exchange Carriers (LEC) and InterExchange Carriers (IEC). These carriers, in a
competitive and changing telecom landscape, had decided it was critical to improve service
velocity, gain control of service provisioning, and deliver advanced network services. To
achieve these ends, the carriers began implementing switch-independent network
architectures.
In 1986, Ameritech proposed an architecture concept, Feature Node Service Interface
(FNSI), intended to create a truly distributed network architecture. Through successive
industry efforts, primarily driven by Bellcore, AIN emerged as a network standard in the
early 90s.
ECTI was the counterpart of AIN. In fact, it anticipated AIN. Proposed by the private
switch (PBX) manufacturers, ECTI was meant to address the demands of enterprise customers,
who wanted advanced applications, improved time-to feature delivery, and the ability to
control and to customize their applications. Such customers, particularly those in call
center environments, often implemented ECTI by using external processors and configuring
custom applications to enhance PBX functionality (Figure 2).
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN ECTI AND AIN
ECTI and ANI both provide for reporting; operations, administration, and management;
billing interfaces; and real-time monitoring tools. In addition, they both provide a
graphical user interface (GUI)-based service creation environment (SCE) for rapid service
and application configuration. Even more significant, however, are the underlying
architectural similarities, which are summarized in Table 1.
ECTI AND AIN APPLICATIONS
AIN
AIN.1 has primarily delivered enhanced 8XX/900 and callingcard services based on a limited
set of call control primitives. AIN.2 will provide additional services, such as voice acti
vated dialing, network call-back, and sequential multilocation ringing. From a call center
perspective, the 800 calls are presented to agent queues, based on a predetermined logic.
The information on the real-time status of the agent does not drive the routing decision.
ECTI
ECTI has permeated close to 20 percent of call centers in the United States, provid-ing
critical productivity enhancements and customer interaction applications, such as: Call
Routing: which, based on business strategies and availability of agents, delivers an
incoming call to the most appropriate customer service representative. This allows for the
custom treatment of every call and therefore every customer. Campaign Management: which is
a composite application for running outbound sales and marketing campaigns.
Call blending allows for efficient operation of a call center by allowing outbound
campaigns to be interspersed with inbound call management. Screen-Based Telephony: which
uses a “SoftPhone” to reproduce an agent’s phone controls on the
agent’s PC.
Call Center Management: which provides a real-time pulse of the total operation of a
call center, including the agent, the physical and logical queues and groups, and the
level of service being provided to the customers. Reporting Applications: which track a
call and associated transactions from “cradle to grave” and produce customized
reports.
While this is just a sampling of applications, the key message is that at the
enterprise level, and as customer premises equipment (CPE), ECTI delivers many
sophisticated call center services today.
NETWORK CTI
NCTI, defined as the delivery of ECTI applications as a multitenant carrier network
service, is currently undergoing trials by leading carriers and large private networks.
These leading carriers are driven to deliver NCTI applications by several business
imperatives:
Competition Among Carriers
- The carrier services, including Centrex and 800 services must be differentiated, as new
entrants vie for market position.
- The slow pace of AIN-based services, and the costs of wholesale infrastructure upgrades.
Opportunities Related To Growth
- There are currently more than 60,000 call centers in the United States, with a
compounded annual growth rate of 18 percent. The smaller call center market, below 50
agents, is growing as a percentage of the total call centers. This is a clear opportunity
for the carriers.
- Creating virtual call centers — “taking the center out of the call
center”
- — and taking advantage of the resource pool working at home. Availability Of
Technology
- The leading Central Office (CO) switches provide APIs for CTI applications.
- The cost and quality performance of commercial server platforms; the reach of TCP/IP
networks; and the growth of Internet and electronic based interactions and transactions.
CARRIER SOLUTION
Three specific carrier service opportunities are discussed. For illustration purposes,
current Genesys applications are referenced.
Enterprise-Directed 800 Solution (ED800)
The ED800 application allows a routing decision to be made, at an enterprise level, based
on the availability of the most appropriate agent. The 800 call is held in the
carriers’ network while the router makes a routing decision in less than 250
milliseconds. As depicted in Figure 3, this is a hybrid ECTI/NCTI application, in that the
router is part of the customers’ private network, but is connected to the carriers
SCP through a gateway. The call routing application has the real-time visibility of the
state of all agents at all centers (through the StatServer), and makes a decision as to
which specific agent across all of the centers, or in the case where no appropriate agents
are available, to the center where the call will be answered quickest (Dynamic Load
Balancing).
Use of caller entered data, database look-ups, ANI, DNIS, etc., can all be used to
assist in the routing decision.
Network Call Center Services
This application is the true merging of AIN and NCTI. As depicted in Figure 4, the NCTI
server acts as an SCP adjunct. For routing applications, the SCP receives its routing
information from the NCTI server, which maintains a real time view of the agents’
availability through the CTI link. In the case of a remote agent, this is achieved through
a TAPI modem. With NCTI as an adjunct to the SCP, new network services can be provided
without the need for expensive SCP upgrades. Advanced routing schemes, including
Skill-Based and DataDriven routing, Follow Me Services, and Emergency/Mass Notification
services are a few examples.
Centrex Call Center Services
This virtual call center application takes advantage of the CO switches’ API link.
Lucent’s 5ESS-Pinnacle and Nortel’s DMS100-CompuCall are examF ples of such
APIs. As illustrated in Figure 5, the CO switches are NCTIenabled, and the full suite of
applications available to the CPE-based platforms are available as a telco service
offering.
In this virtual call center offering, any Centrex user can be viewed as an agent, and a
very powerful solution emerges for the informal call center. The telcos will be able to
package and deliver this as Enhanced Centrex, providing vertical market targeted
applications. Examples include: “POP-ing” a nurses’ screen with the
patient’s information in a hospital or doctor’s office as the patient calls;
giving the knowledge worker the ability to give customized treatments to incoming calls,
including unique greetings and processing; and giving the agent or the knowledge worker
the freedom to work at home, having access to all of the sophisticated services available
at the office.
Inbound and outbound call centers can be configured in the network, analogous to
Centrex service, allowing the call center owners to focus on their customers rather than
the underlying technology and infrastructure.
CONCLUSION
Business is conducted using a mix of public services, private networks, the Internet,
wireless networks, and specialized carriers. The carriers’ vision of AIN, where they
can respond to their customers’ business need in a timely fashion is becoming a
reality. The use of commercially available server platforms, databases, and NCTI
applications will enable the carriers to reduce the cost and the time-to-market of new
services. NCTI plays a critical role in serving customer interactions in the setting of a
formal call center, knowledge workers collaboration, and personal productivity
applications. Using NCTI, the leading carriers will “open” the network,
differentiate their services, and provide a host of high value network-based applications.
Seth Homayoon is vice president and general manager of the Network Applications
& Services division at Genesys Telecommunications Labs, a leading provider of
Enterprise and Network CTI platforms and applications. Mr. Homayoon has been involved with
some of the key telecommunications developments of the past 20 years, including the
introduction of digital switching and fiber optic transmission, the definition and
development of Intelligent Network, and developments of desktop video and screen-based
telephony. He is currently focused on delivering CTI platforms to leading network service
providers, enabling them to provision advanced call center and routing applications from
the network. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.genesyslabs.com. |
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