IP Call Center Technology and Development
Yi Jianxin
With the advancement of science and technology, based on the company's computer network and telecommunications network, especially the rapid development of VoIP technology, communication technology, computer technology, telecommunications services and Internet services are increasingly inclined to meet. CTI (Computer Telephone Integration) technology is developing in this environment.
CTi technology's successful application is a hot spot that is currently very concerned about. The call center refers to a call response center based on telephone access. It provides customers with a new type of specialized service, which handles customers from a professional training. Customers Customer Voice Answer (IVR) Guide or after the customer's caller number is identified, the customer can directly select the automatic answer service, or go to the most suitable artificial agent. When the agent's agent picks up the phone, the computer screen has popped up the background information and historical service information, so the agent can provide friendly and professional services.
Almost all traditional telecommunications services can be successful in the call center, but with the rapid spread of the Internet and some small and medium-sized enterprises and cross-regional enterprises and institutions, the price is very demanding. How to make the call center support the customer's WWW access, and solve the distributed setup and cost of the call center, which is difficult to solve the problem using CTI technology. The rapid development of VoIP technology has been capable of solving the above problems. Generally, people are called this call center using VoIP technology as an IP Call Center.
Development of IP Call Center
The most important issue facing the call center is to address the acceptance of the service objects from various possible ways. The earlier call center seat faced from the PSTN phone call, and later added the acceptance of the fax business. With the impact of the Internet development, some people are increasingly accustomed to complaints, consultation, and IP Call Center are generated in this environment.
IP Call Center has blended the Internet field, which joined the web server and email server on the basis of the original call center, and can meet the needs of users in a certain period of time, but with the development and popularity of IP phones. Customers from Internet have a higher request for call centers. They want call centers to provide a function - can directly and the agent exchanged directly and the agent after customer browsing the main page. Get a browser navigation, whiteboard technology, etc.
IP CALL CENTER solves the access problem of service objects from the Internet and public telephone networks, and has been accepted and widely developed by many companies around the world. IP Call Center technology has also been developed rapidly. To the development row of this product. At present, many integrators who do the traditional mode call center have played IP banner, some ACDs and other equipment providers also start to provide IP equipment, and the Maturity of IP Call Center market has also entered this market competition.
PTIC (China Putian) has developed a platform-IP PBX based on IP Call Center in 1999. In addition, Huawei company applies IP gateway technology to Call Center, also enriches the product type of IP CALL CENTER. Foreign countries involved in IP Call Center earlier and more successful manufacturers include Cisco, 3COM, Lucent, and so on.
The development of IP Call Center has also brought some questions. At present, the products of various manufacturers have a big difference in architecture, business meanings, module interfaces, etc., which will seriously affect the standardization and application of IP Call Center. Starting in 2000, the Ministry of Information Industry has begun to develop an industry standard for IP Call Center. It is reported that the standard has been consensus on the discussion on December 12, 2000 and will be launched in early 2001. The industry standard for IP Call Center will provide technical basis for the development and business of IP Call Center. Key technologies for IP Call Center
Regardless of how each manufacturer constructs IP Call Center, no matter how the IP Call Center will be developed, several key technical issues must be solved:
1. Voice queuing access problem
For IP CALL CENTER, the voice call category of the agent accepts is a DTMF phone and IP phone. These two voice categories should be uniformly queued. How to solve these two different nature voice call unified queues are IP Call Center One of the key technical issues. There are currently two typical methods to achieve:
D2a to analog D2A Method will be transferred to an IP phone in the call center into an analog phone through the VoIP gateway in advance, and then the DTMF phone is represented by ACD access. The D2A method is simple to easily upgrade from the traditional call center to the IP call center. However, its disadvantage is that the cost is relatively high, it is not conducive to the promotion of the call center, and each function module is physically distributed, which is neither a cross region and is not conducive to high integration. This method is more common in manufacturers and integrators of traditional calling centers, such as China's Huawei, ZTE, foreign Lucent and other companies.
A2D method (Analog to Data) A2D method will transfer the DTMF of the incoming call center into an IP phone through the VoIP gateway, and then access the agent representative. The A2D method is relatively troubles, but it will be made to the open software platform of the computer network to the computer network. In addition to facilitating updates and development, it can reduce costs. At the same time, this structure can be geographically and physically expanded, but it is not only highly integrated, but also facilitates cross-regional construction.
The above two methods can be represented by the following schematic:
2. Unified Acceptance of Different Media
The call center needs to be unified to the various media incoming media, and then assigned to the agent representative in accordance with certain principles, and the agent represents the corresponding response and processing. In addition to the DTMF phone, IP phones, IP faxes, web homepage, email, etc., IP Call Center implementation must solve this technical problem.
At present, IP Call Center implements the integrated media unified process, that is, the voice media stream and IP fax, the web home page, and Email enters the seat group, the service software is unified, and the service software is unified before the voice media stream and IP faxes, the web home page, Email enters the seat group. General manufacturers are called Call Center Server, which works with user data management and information monitoring of call synchronization, and user data management and information monitoring with call synchronization.
3. Protect the traditional call center has an investment, smooth upgrade to the IP call center
This issue is very important to expand and add new features for enterprise units in the traditional call center. It can be seen from the above discussion that the D2A's access method completely retains the original ACD investment, which can simply achieve smooth upgrade, and how the A2D solves this problem? There are two kinds of representative solutions, one is the practice of the example of Figure 1, adding a VoIP gateway on the user side of the ACD, unifying access (as shown in Figure 4); another method is cheaper The IP seat card and the relevant protocol module (as shown in Figure 5) is added to the Call Manager (shown in Figure 5). The two solutions have been relatively low, but the development is difficult, the first is just the opposite. The manufacturer of these two solutions is that each of the first programs can be provided, and the second only cost only manufacturers can provide.
4. Other technical key
1. Uniformity of the service provided by the traditional call center and the Internet call center
How to implement the WebPhone, how to make the traditional call center and the Internet call center provide an external unified service model to the agent, how to make the two internal service processing processes are the first difficult to transparently.
2. Recognition of call properties
When a customer call comes in, the call center must accurately identify call sources, that is, who is the calling party; that is, the call is from the Internet or from the phone; identify the service requested by the call, and turn the call according to the service category Give the most suitable age.
3. Strengthen the interaction of customers, agents, service providers
How to strengthen between customers and agents, between seats and agents, the interaction capabilities between agents and other service providers are also important issues that need to be considered. Solve the interaction between customers, agents, other service providers, mainly to solve the synchronization problem of computers and phones, and the synchronization and form sharing issues between the agent and customers in the Internet Call Center application.
4. Implement the organic combination of artificial service and automated service
The system must establish a set of automated service systems, including the interactive voice response system and a background transaction processing system on the web server. At the same time, it is also necessary to establish a set of switching mechanisms that make customers simple service requests can be completed separately by the automatic service system; complex service requests can be transferred to the agent by the automatic service system; the agent can request a service request Return to the automatic service system. In order to achieve synergies between artificial agent services and automated services, it is necessary to solve the problem of mutual delivery of data and instruction messages between the two.
5. Internal control flow complex
Since the communication medium is increased, the service range is wider, and there are two fields of communication technology and computer technology, so there are many objects to control, and each object is more complicated, and the control flow needs to be carefully designed.
Conclude
At present, some major enterprise groups in China, civil aviation, finance, railway and other industries are under construction or brewing the call center, and some small and medium-sized enterprises have hoped to have their own call center, especially IP call center. Now, many companies take into account the questions when seeking call center solutions: Can I play IP phones, expensive, can provide more value-added services ... These will be well solved in IP Call Center.
Unfortunately, there are not many companies that have launched relevant products in China, while the application of developed countries such as the United States has been quite extensive. It is gratifying that my country has taken the forefront in this regard, and more and more companies have joined their development ranks. There is reason to believe that we will soon usher in the beautiful tomorrow of IP Call Center development and application.
