Building for the Future Flexibility and cost savings without sacrificing service quality

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1 Applications Brief Remote Agents: Building for the Future Flexibility and cost savings without sacrificing service quality Competing successfully and profitably both now and in the future demands you use every advantage. Leveraging remote contact center agents can help you seize that advantage while building for the future. Allowing your staff to work remotely either at home or in a branch office provides solutions to challenges like finding and retaining qualified staff and meeting the demand for contact center agents at peak business times. boundaries while still providing a seamless experience for customers. And advanced IP Telephony solutions can allow businesses to reduce toll costs and improve customer service. * delivers remote contact center solutions that help you increase staff retention, stay flexible and increase profits in the most effective ways possible. Advances in technology enable managers to monitor agents down the hall or across the state. Contact Center applications can be extended across geographical

2 Meeting your business challenges Among the many challenges facing the call center business today, finding and keeping skilled employees is one of the greatest. Remote agent solutions give companies the ability to compete for reliable, skilled agents by offering them flexible hours, parttime work and the chance to avoid long commutes. It also increases the pool of agents. The flexibility of working at home opens up the field of potential agents: persons with disabilities, students, parents with children at home and seniors. And geographic boundaries no longer hinder the search for highly skilled agents who are needed for technical support or information hotlines. Once agents are hired and trained, businesses face the challenge of retaining them in the same competitive market. And with the costs of training an employee sometimes exceeding $10,000 per agent, retention is a huge cost area. Staff appreciate flexible scheduling and see it as a great benefit. (Many call centers using remote agents report average annual turnover rates as low as 8% [Call Center Magazine, n.d.].) Remote agents also give you the agility to staff for peak times in your business, such as sales promotions, holiday season, or around the clock. And there is no need to worry about extra desk space. Your remote agents can be as productive at home as they are in the office, using IP Telephony technology and networking capabilities. You can save on corporate real estate costs, cutting them by 25% to 90%. 1 offers a variety of remote agent solutions that allow you to leverage your investment in existing switching and Symposium contact center systems to reap the competitive advantage by ramping only when there s a need. Leverage proven, feature-rich applications to meet your business challenges For contact centers looking to increase their reach to remote locations, such as home offices and branch offices, provides scalable solutions that let businesses: Build on existing technology Reduce turnover Improve productivity Provide a seamless networking environment Manage remote agents easily Use a browser-based management interface. Manage your contact center remotely IP Telephony solutions offer companies unprecedented power to manage call center agents working down the hall or at home. IP Telephony technology combines voice and data into a common IP network, providing benefits in network management and cost efficiency. The network can be managed from one location, and data can be stored centrally, saving on servers and system administration costs. Calls are routed cost-effectively over the IP network as packet-switched. With Remote Office solutions, Quality of Service (QoS) is monitored, and the call can be dynamically transitioned to a circuitswitched connection if voice quality degrades on the IP line. Thus, remote agents benefit from the efficiencies of IP Telephony and the reliability of a circuit-switched connection. Should the IP network go down, remote agents have access to local ISDN-BRI trunk connections to support inbound and outbound calls, ensuring no loss in call time or voice quality. Managing employees and gathering data are simple. Symposium Call Center Web Client offers real-time, graphical displays that provide a snapshot of the call center for management to view customized performance statistics for increased responsiveness to changing conditions no matter where call center agents are located. Managers can also access complete, customizable reports and call tracking with 78 standard reports. They can customize historical reports using SQL report writers such as Crystal Report and Excel. With Symposium Call Center Server, managers will always have the valuable data they need to make business decisions. We are continually looking to introduce new ways of working to help increase customer satisfaction and employee productivity. Nortel Networks enterprise IP Telephony solution helped us open doors to new applications and functionalities. We are now able to link all our offices together while managing them from one central location, maximizing efficiency in the workplace and allowing employees to increase their mobility. Martin Kiser Chief Information Officer, Obwaldner Kantonalbank

3 Remote agent solutions Remote Office 9115/9110 With the Remote Office 9115 and 9110, contact center agents can operate from home anytime. Designed to extend the Meridian* digital telephone sets to remote user locations using IP Telephony, the technology gives teleworking users full access to the contact center features offered by Symposium Call Center Server, as if they were at the head office. Highspeed data technologies (xdsl and cable modems), as well as the established ISDN services, can connect the corporate host site to the remote location for both voice and data. Survivability is preserved with the ability to switch automatically to backup analog lines, enabling incoming and outgoing calls to continue if QoS declines or the network connection is lost. This helps to ensure that homebased agents will be as productive as the ones in the main office. Remote Office 9150 Remote Office 9150 provides a costeffective solution for the management of small remote offices with up to 32 agents. Leveraging investment in the SAMPLE REMOTE OFFICE 9150 CONFIGURATION UP TO 32 MERIDIAN DIGITAL TELEPHONES ROUTER FAX REMOTE OFFICE 9150 ISDN BRI REMOTE OFFICE IP WAN PSTN SAMPLE 9115 CONFIGURATION 9115 UNIT HOME OFFICE CARRIER PROVIDED DSL/CABLE MODEM host Meridian or Succession system, Remote Office 9150 extends Meridian 1 digital telephones to a remote site. Using the IP WAN to carry voice between remote offices and the head office, this functionality also allows remote users to share CallPilot,* Meridian Mail and Symposium Call Center applications. Because small offices are connected with the main office, enterprises can leverage existing contact center applications and PBX equipment, saving on server costs and system administration. And management reports and monitoring systems encompass both local and remote agents, allowing centralized supervision. ISDN PRI/T-1/E1 ROUTER ANALOG LINE M3900 & M2000 DIGITAL PHONES MERIDIAN REACH LINE CARD MAIN OFFICE INTERNET PSTN SYMPOSIUM CALL CENTER SERVER T1/E1 ISDN PRI MERIDIAN 1 Featuring the same survivability capabilities as the Remote Office 9115/9110, the Remote Office 9150 can automatically transition calls to backup ISDN-BRI lines to help ensure that remote offices can function at all times. It wasn t easy finding a solution that would fill all our needs. When we looked at Remote Office 9150, we were delighted with the simplicity and elegance of the solution and even more pleased with the price. Hilton Davies REACH LINE CARD MAIN OFFICE SYMPOSIUM CALL CENTER SERVER Head of Information Technology, NHS Direct Wales Succession Branch Office Succession Branch Office provides large office features and capabilities to smaller locations. With this solution in place, you can extend your voice and data services to a geographically distributed IP contact center, while providing a seamless customer and agent experience. The Succession Branch Office supports Nortel Networks IP telephones for contact center agents, including the i2050 software phone. It offers a flexible and reliable solution for branch offices ranging in size from 80 to 400 users. In normal mode, the IP phones are managed from a central site and

4 Symposium Call Center Server controls the routing of incoming contact center calls. However, if the connection to the main site is lost, the IP phones can revert to a survival mode operation, retaining the features and numbering plans that are available during normal operations. In survival mode, calls arriving at the local branch office are routed and tracked using ACD. This survivability feature helps to ensure that calls are answered by an agent at all times, even in the event of a WAN failure. Software Phone The i2050 Software Phone combines the power of the PC and telephony to increase productivity for home-based or mobile agents. The i2050 puts all business applications on the desktop, so your agents can do more in less time, while reducing costs and leveraging desk space. The familiar dial pad and key features are graphically represented on the PC screen to allow ease of use, and it s the only software phone to support a USB headset to provide superior voice quality. Available in ten languages, it can be used around the world. Other features include programmable keys for contact center features such as In-Calls, Make Busy, Not Ready, Call Supervisor and Activity Codes. The i2050 also supports traditional telephony features such as Call Origination, Call Termination, Conference, Transfer, Hold and Message Waiting Indication and a user selectable headset volume. Pure-IP contact centers distribute contact center agents across corporate WAN using Distribute calls to branch offices, home offices or across time zones using proven IP Telephony technology. You can maintain an all-ip environment using Symposium Call Center i2050 Software Phone Server or Symposium Express Call Center with the Succession The Succession 1000 delivers an unprecedented level of performance and range of system features. Bringing together the very best that has to offer, these scalable systems deliver a powerful virtual contact center that can help your business leverage the unparalleled potential of the Internet. Adding skill-based call routing can shorten call length and improve efficiency. In May 2000, we had 52,000 calls and the answer delay was more than six minutes. The calls exceeded our expectations by about 60%. After the implementation, we averaged 69,000 calls, and the average delay was 52 seconds. For us, speed and scalability are major highlights of the IP Contact Center solution that translates to premium service for our customers and for Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Reinhard Pees Director, Global Information Technology, Carlson Wagonlit Travel Summary of Solutions IP Contact Center Solutions, including Symposium Call Center Server and Symposium Express Call Center, offer a wide array of technology options, so you can choose the best systems for your business needs, and upgrade as those needs grow. remote contact center agent solutions provide ease of use, a rich feature set, proven reliability and the ability to extend your business where and when you need it. Take your contact center further with Professional Services For assistance in implementing your contact center and creating a custom solution, you can call on our highly skilled Professional Services team. Around the globe, we can complement your in-house experts with professionals who have the in-depth technical knowledge and practical experience to turn your broad strategies into specific implementations. We are ready to assist you with every facet of customization, planning and project management. Our business consulting services include needs analysis; assessment of current processes and technologies; identification of management goals; step-by-step implementation plans; and calculation of your investment payback. We can also help with application development and system integration, as well as with managing implementation through various milestones, including quality control, final testing and administrative training. Whatever the scope of your requirements telephone or on-site assistance; a traditional maintenance program; a customized test plan; or comprehensive system design and integration services our Professional Services team has the resources to provide a complete, highly customized solution. 1 Numbers provided by PC World, 2002.

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6 In the United States: 35 Davis Drive Research Triangle Park, NC USA In Canada: 8200 Dixie Road Suite 100 Brampton, Ontario L6T 5P6 Canada In the Caribbean and Latin America: 1500 Concorde Terrace Sunrise, FL USA In Europe: Maidenhead Office Park Westacott Way Maidenhead Berkshire SL6 3QH UK In Asia: Asia 6/F Cityplaza 4, Taikooshing, 12 Taikoo Wan Road, Hong Kong is an industry leader and innovator focused on transforming how the world communicates and exchanges information. The company is supplying its service provider and enterprise customers with communications technology and infrastructure to enable value-added IP data, voice and multimedia services spanning Wireless Networks, Wireline Networks, Enterprise Networks and Optical Networks. As a global company, does business in more than 150 countries. More information about can be found on the Web at: For more information, contact your representative, or call NORTEL or from anywhere in North America. *, the logo, the globemark design, Symposium, Meridian, CallPilot and Succession are trademarks of. All other trademarks are the property of their owners. Copyright All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. NN