For IP telephony solutions company Mitel (News - Alert), the future of contact centers lies in communications solutions with integrated ‘presence’ features. At VoiceCon this week in Orlando, Florida, Mitel is featuring its Contact Center Enterprise Edition platform.

 

Using IP telephony technology to empower call center agents and manager to work more efficiently; that’s the motivation behind Mitel’s call center-focused solutions. Contact Center Enterprise Edition pulls together support for various communications modes (voice, e-mail, Web chat, fax, etc.) with automatic call distribution (ACD), and modular Web-based applications in order to help enterprises boost profits by building and retaining customer bases.

 

Contact Center Enterprise Edition is part of Mitel’s broader IP telephony portfolio, offering proven technology in a package designed specifically for call centers.

 

“Mitel’s presence-enabled Customer Interaction Solutions extend the reach of contact centers to drive first contact resolution to customer inquiries, increase the effectiveness and satisfaction of agents, improve customer loyalty and build profitable relationships,” said Mitel CEO Don Smith, in a statement to the press.

The first point that Smith raised—first contact resolutions—is a well-known challenge in the call center industry. The idea is to ensure that when a customer calls, his or her problem is resolved during that call; the customer does not have to call back.

 

One reason that a call may not get resolved on the first try is that the agent doesn’t have the needed skill or knowledge level to address the problem. But, what if an expert could be pulled in to answer the question? Mitel thought that sounded like a good idea, so it built a communications solution which lets call center agents easily collaborate with other enterprise staff, including experts and partners, in order to quickly resolve customer inquiries and efficiently complete customer order.

 

Mitel claims that its solutions, by combining IP telephony-based presence with federation capabilities, “delivers true first contact resolution by allowing access to external partners such as suppliers to resolve customer challenges and create competitive advantages.”

One way Mitel does this is through tight integration with Microsoft (News - Alert) Live Communications Server 2005. Recently, independent testing lab Miercom examined this integration and concluded—in a review that featured Mitel along with other call center solution vendors—that it is a significant advantage.

 

Using Live Communications Server 2005 with Mitel’s solution, call center agents can access presence information for subject matter experts who have Microsoft Office Communicator installed on their desktops. Mitel’s solution also utilizes Microsoft Exchange Server (multimedia e-mail support) and Microsoft Outlook (multimedia agent desktop).

 

Another unique aspect of Mitel Contact Center Enterprise Edition, the company noted, is “a configuration designed to let agents in public spaces incorporate physical walk-in traffic in the system's ACD queuing, for businesses where this is a possible scenario.”

To learn more about how Mitel is using IP telephony technology to enhance the functionality of presence features in the call center, please visit the IP Telephony and Presence channels on TMCnet.com.