Cisco ICM Software Computer Telephony Integration

Transcription

1 DATA SHEET Cisco ICM Software Computer Telephony Integration Bringing Enterprise Data to Enterprise Desktops Cisco Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) software enables companies to deploy a complete network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI) strategy, including comprehensive functionality at the agent s workstation. ICM solutions deliver a uniquely rich set of data to business applications, providing enterprise-wide call-event and customer-profile information to a targeted agent s desktop. This comprehensive CTI strategy enables the full utilization of corporate data in support of business rules and objectives at the point of customer contact. Cisco ICM software enables companies to more effectively utilize their corporate resources by leveraging information collected from the Internet, carrier networks, automatic call distributors (ACDs), interactive voice response (IVR) systems, Web servers, servers, databases, and other applications. The ICM solution sets a new standard for true enterprise CTI by unifying contact center systems from the network to the desktop and across the enterprise with minimal custom development or systems integration, enabling an organization to implement CTI quickly and cost-effectively (Figure 1). Figure 1 Enterprise CTI Strategy Workforce Mgt. App. Gateway NIVR NIC ICM PSTN/VoIP IVR NAM/SCP DB Option ACD Start Acct. Lookup Customer Service Call PLA? GOLD? Acct#: ACD Customer-profile Database PG Services I V R A C D C T I Data Collected Agent: 5555 SKG1: Premium SKG2: Sales DN: CLID: CED: 1 Acct#: Call Termination Detail Call Routing Detail Transaction Detail IP Customer Acct Portfolio Name: xx xdfs Voice Data Agent 5587 Agent 5555 All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 1 of 8

2 Product Capabilities and Benefits An Enterprise Approach From the first line of code, Cisco ICM software was designed to be a true enterprise solution in terms of reliability, scalability, and supportability. Benefits include an open systems architecture which integrates both present and future contact center applications, economies of scale, customer-service and productivity enhancements through skills-based routing at the enterprise level, and access to uniquely rich data for routing decisions and delivery to the desktop. Rich CTI Data Cisco ICM software provides a uniquely rich data set to the desktop through advanced CT connections among the system and carrier networks, ACDs, IVRs, and Web and servers. Information from these disparate resources is normalized by the ICM system and then used in triggering integrated desktop telephony applications such as screen pops and voice/data transfer. Data elements can include dialed number (DN), calling line ID (CLID), and customer-entered digits (CED); information submitted on a Web form; and information extracted from databases or created as a result of contact routing, voice processing, and agent transactions. Cisco ICM software routes call-event and call-detail information to a targeted desktop when and where the contact is delivered. Pre-route Indications Database lookups, particularly data-mining operations in which multiple records are queried, are time-consuming. Cisco ICM software delivers pre-route indications to a CTI client, enabling these database operations to take place before a contact arrives at a contact center and permitting complex data-mining results to be delivered to the desktop before contact arrival. When the ICM system returns a route destination to the network, it simultaneously passes the customer-profile data to the CTI client. While the contact is still in the network, the client delivers appropriate database information to the agent desktop. As a result, screen pops occur when they are most useful on or before the first ring of the agent s phone. Post-Routing Through the Post-Routing function, Cisco ICM software lets clients benefit from the same powerful routing logic that the system delivers during the Pre-Routing application. This capability allows contact center managers to control contact flow throughout the life of each customer interaction, providing the best possible contact treatment in a consistent manner. When transfers are necessary, the ICM platform finds the best resource within the enterprise, alleviating agents of that responsibility. Coordinated Voice/Data Transfer Across the Enterprise Cisco ICM software delivers benefits to both the customer and the contact center and these benefits do not stop when the first agent receives the contact. If the contact is subsequently transferred to another agent, the ICM platform provides coordinated voice/data transfer by sending customer-profile data along with the contact. The system maintains the customer state and data, even across heterogeneous equipment, throughout the life of a contact from agent to agent and site to site. Distributed Fault Tolerance Distributed fault tolerance is inherent to ICM solutions. In the event of a failed connection, client links are automatically established to a redundant server. The contact s history and any updates remain in effect should the client connection fail and be re-established. Choice at the Desktop Cisco ICM software preserves investments made in legacy desktop systems by easily integrating with existing environments. The flexible ICM solution requires no intrusive changes to legacy systems and supports operations ranging from fewer than 25 to thousands of agents working on a variety of desktops such as OS/2, Windows, Macintosh, and 3270 terminals. All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 2 of 8

3 Enterprise CTI Products Cisco ICM software comprises flexible CTI solutions designed to readily integrate into a company s existing environment. Whether connected to the desktop or the server, the software delivers a rich set of data to the targeted agent. Further, users are able to easily add telephony functions (such as the ability to transfer voice and data from site to site) to their business applications. Server Integration Cisco ICM solutions include a robust back-office CTI environment that manages the availability of real-time and historical information provided by multiple networks, ACDs, IVRs, Web and servers, business applications, databases, and the ICM platform. The system s open software architecture easily integrates server or desktop solutions whether existing or new enabling users to choose the applications that best meet their business needs. The ICM system is fully fault tolerant and supports an unlimited number of client connections, providing customers with a flexible, scalable CTI foundation. The CTI server component of ICM software delivers agent, contact, and customer data in real time to a server and/or workstation application as events occur throughout the life of a contact. Pre-route indications identify a customer and provide associated attributes to applications while the contact is still in the public or private network and before the customer is connected to an agent, Web server, or IVR resource. Call events are provided throughout all stages of the call flow, from the moment a contact arrives at an answering location (ACD, PBX, IVR, Web server, or server) until the customer interaction terminates. Agent work-state changes are reported as they occur. CTI server provides all event messages to any client that connects to it over the native socket interface. Cisco has developed one such client to provide services on top of CTI server and to provide higher-level integration interfaces to Cisco ICM software. The CTI Object Server (CTI OS) is a high performance, scalable, fault-tolerant server-based solution for deploying CTI applications. CTI OS serves as a single point of integration for third-party applications, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, data mining, and workflow solutions. Configuration and behavior information is managed at the server, simplifying customization, updates, and maintenance. Thin-client and browser-based applications that do not require Cisco software on the desktop can be developed and deployed with CTI OS. CTI OS, a client of CTI server, has a single all-events connection to Cisco CTI server. In turn, CTI OS accepts client connections using session, agent, and call interfaces. These interfaces are implemented in COM, Java, C++, and C, allowing for a wide range of application development uses. The interfaces are used for call control, to access data values, and to receive event notifications. Some of the advantages of using CTI OS for integrations are: Exposes multiple programmatic interfaces, so that developers can choose to develop to a Java, COM, C, or C++ interface. Provides an event filter, which enables developers to build applications (such as Supervisory applications) that can monitor or control more than one agent much more easily than with any other Cisco CTI product. Facilitates server-to-server integration. Developers using CTI OS have access to data from CTI server without the need to write to CTI server s native socket API. Reduces the need to account for switch-specific behavior. Switch-specific logic resides in the CTI OS server component, so developers writing to CTI OS need not concern themselves with case programming for their specific switch types. Facilitates thin client, browser-based integrations. Developers desiring an entirely browser-based or thin client desktop can utilize CTI Object Server to integrate with application servers or other hosts, which does not require any Cisco software on the desktop. All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 3 of 8

4 Cisco ICM software s full third-party call control features allow agents, using integrated desktop applications, to perform such tasks as transfer, conference, and set call data, all within an enterprise framework. Voice and data collected by an agent at the desktop can be transferred among agents across multivendor switches, allowing customer and transaction data to accompany a contact from the IVR or Web server to the agent and from site to site as required. This capability increases the efficiency of a contact center by eliminating time spent verbally soliciting information that is already available. Desktop Integration In addition to the server integration points mentioned earlier, Cisco offers a range of desktop CTI products to meet the varied needs of our customers. Our CTI offerings provide customers a choice spanning out-of-the-box CTI solutions to pre-integrated solutions with leading CRM vendors, to desktop tools that allow for fully customized CTI implementations. Any of the desktop solutions utilized will take advantage of the fault tolerant, carrier-class architecture of the ICM software. Simplified CTI Solutions Despite the powerful benefits of CTI, contact centers have not fully embraced CTI. In fact, only 20% of contact centers have CTI capability for their agents. 1 With such tangible benefits available through CTI, why is CTI penetration so small? One reason is the perception that CTI can be difficult, time consuming, and costly to implement. Looking at traditional CTI solutions, that has often been the case. So, in order to realize the benefits of CTI, there is a need to have CTI installed quickly and easily. Contact centers require turnkey solutions that improve agent productivity, resulting in more efficient customer service. As essential as CTI is to contact center productivity, its introduction and up-keep should not be a time and resource burden. Packaged, Configurable Agent Soft phone To address the need for contact centers to deploy simplified CTI solutions, Cisco offers an out-of-the-box offering, that provides soft phone capabilities such as call answer, hold, conference, and transfer, allowing agents to control traditional telephony functions from their PCs rather than traditional handset telephones. The soft phone desktop component requires minimum screen real estate and enables agents to customize functionality to individual needs. The soft phone capability also includes a telephone directory that allows agents to manage contacts in groups on their desktops and initiate outbound dialing. To address the needs of the majority of contact centers, the agent softphone includes core functionality including: Third party call control (answer/drop, hold/unhold, conference, transfer, redirect) Configurable desktop view for efficient use of desktop real estate Flexibility to view the soft phone steadily or use it in stationary mode (resting in tray but not launched) Time savings by minimizing keystrokes to move between applications One-button automation of during-call and post-call work 1. Pelorus Group, 1999 All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 4 of 8

5 The soft phone has the ability to be configured to match the needs of each contact center without the need for full customization. Configurability allows an administrator, not a custom developer, to adjust the functionality that contact center agents have at their disposal. For example, removing the redirect feature is as simple as checking a box in the administration interface; no custom code is required. Figure 2 Cisco Desktop Application Screen Pop One of the most important aspects of a CTI implementation is the package s ability to provide caller data to the agent s application at the desktop. This is commonly referred to as a screen pop. To achieve the screen pop, the telephone network provides data about the call and the caller from the telephone network (e.g. CLID, CED, and DN) to the CTI application. The CTI package takes that information, as well as any information collected by an IVR unit, and passes it to the desktop application. The desktop application can then do a lookup of the customer s information and pop the appropriate customer record screen to the agent s PC. With screen pop, contact center agents are able to handle calls more quickly (because they do not need to query the customer for basic information) and provide better service (because customers do not need to re-state information that they may have already provided to an IVR). Screen pop should also be available to any agent who may subsequently join the call, for example, via a transfer or conference operation. Screen pops have been accomplished traditionally by incorporating custom code that integrates the agent s business application (e.g. the customer database or CRM system) to the telephony system. As an alternative to custom-coded screen pops, Cisco s simplified CTI solutions allow keystroke macro recording to be utilized to allow users to create macros by pressing the appropriate keys in a Windows application and inserting telephony data (i.e. ANI, DNIS, and caller entered digits) where required. Screen pop applications using this technology then automatically replay these macros when the call arrives or is answered, opening relevant Windows-based applications, customer records, or even fields within a record. Pre-integrated CTI-enabled CRM For customers making use of popular commercially-available CRM packages, Cisco offers standard integrations that CTI-enable the CRM application. The CTI-enabled CRM application makes use of Cisco CTI technology under the covers to provide integration between the CRM application and telephony components. For example, soft phone capability is provided through the CRM application user interface, but the telephony functions are actually provided via Cisco software. All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 5 of 8

6 Contact centers that take advantage of these pre-integrated solutions provide their agents with a single cockpit application for call control, screen pop, and total customer management. Agents do not have to concern themselves with switching between customer service and telephony functions, since all features are delivered in the single CRM user interface. Furthermore, standard screen pop elements can be defined so that telephony driven screen pops of customer data can be easily delivered by the CRM package. Developer Tools for Custom Solutions For customers that desire a fully customized solution, Cisco provides powerful development tools that offer ultimate flexibility for CTI solutions. Cisco CTI toolkits provide a number of API s for developing integrations between third-party applications and Cisco ICM and CTI. The toolkits provide the ability for developers in a Windows environment to drag and drop telephony controls into an existing application. Additionally, Cisco toolkits include numerous examples of sample code that perform functions such as screen pops and third party call control via a custom soft phone. The developer toolkits preserve investments in existing desktop technology by enabling developers to design applications for varied platforms from Windows, to OS/2, to Macintosh, to 3270 terminals. Developers wishing to utilize Cisco s custom tools have multiple development environments to chose from, including Visual Basic/COM, C, C++, Java, and HTML. Cisco Intelligent Contact Management Solutions Cisco ICM software, based on open industry standards, creates an enterprise-wide customer-contact platform by integrating multivendor networks, automatic call distributors, voice response systems, Web servers, databases, desktop applications, agents, and other resources. ICM software combines Pre-Routing and Post-Routing capabilities with an extensive management-reporting system and supports distributed fault tolerance to ensure the mission-critical reliability needed for customer interaction. Solutions are provided for single-site and multi-site deployments. Service Information Delivered directly or through our partner ecosystem, Cisco provides strategic and consultative support that maps to each stage of the CTI solution lifecycle: planning, design, implementation and operation (PDIO). Rapid deployment services allow businesses to confidently plan, design and implement CTI to receive rapid results, leveraging Cisco experience and proven practices. With Cisco rapid deployment services for CTI customers can deploy more efficiently and cost-effectively tapping into experienced, expert resources available globally. Contact your Account Manager for more details about pricing on these custom services. Technical Support Services Software Application Support Plus Upgrades (SASU) provides maintenance and troubleshooting to keep ICM software operational and highly available. SASU provides companies with 24x7 access to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), 24x7 access to the TAC website that contains an extensive technical library, knowledge bases, online tools, and minor and major software releases. Cisco industry-leading technical support improves the availablility and reliability of the application and provides all a business needs to secure its technology infrastructure. Summary The CTI capabilities of Cisco ICM software are essential for companies seeking to leverage enterprise-wide data to obtain maximum customer-service levels. The system s ability to deliver accurate customer-profile and contact center information to the desktop, perform agent-to-agent transfer of call-detail information across multiple sites, and allow selection of best-of-class desktop solutions can enable your business to achieve higher levels of contact center efficiency and customer satisfaction. All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 6 of 8

7 Figure 3 Sample Voice/Data Flow Customer-profile Database CC 4. Account Information 5. DN, CLID, CED, Account Information 5. Route destination 6. Peripheral Gateway/ CTI Server 7. Pre-route Indication CTI Server Interface ACD Agent Data ACD/CTI Info TCP/IP 2. NIVR PSTN/VoIP 3. DN, CLID, CED NAM/SCP Customer xxx-xxxx ACD 8. Desktop application IVR (See Note) Voice Data Business Application Server 1. A customer dials an enterprise toll-free number to make an account inquiry. 2. The call is connected to a prompt in the network. The network IVR (NIVR) plays a script collecting an account number through CED. 3. The network sends a route request which contains the DN, CLID, and CED to the ICM central controller (CC). 4. ICM software looks up account information and parses information to determine the best possible route destination based on a real-time view of all resources in the enterprise. 5. ICM software collects the call-context information, instructs the network to route the call to an ACD, and sends all call data to the ICM peripheral gateway (PG). 6. The PG at the ACD site recognizes the incoming call and matches the caller data with the call. 7. When the ACD selects an agent, the PG sends the customer information to the desktop application. 8. The business application at the desktop presents the customer information to the agent. Note: The sample voice/data flow outlined above depicts an IVR in the carrier network. Alternatively, prompting may occur through an IVR at the premises or through a combination of network- and premises-based IVRs. All contents are Copyright All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 7 of 8

8 Corporate Headquarters 170 West Tasman Drive San Jose, CA USA Tel: NETS (6387) Fax: European Headquarters Cisco Systems Europe 11, Rue Camille Desmoulins Issy-les-Moulineaux Cedex 9 France www-europe.cisco.com Tel: Fax: Americas Headquarters 170 West Tasman Drive San Jose, CA USA Tel: Fax: Asia Pacific Headquarters Cisco Systems Australia, Pty., Ltd Level 9, 80 Pacific Highway P.O. Box 469 North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia Tel: Fax: Cisco Systems has more than 200 offices in the following countries and regions. Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Web site at Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China PRC Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Dubai, UAE Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong SAR Hungary India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Luxembourg Malaysia Mexico The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Scotland Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Venezuela Vietnam Zimbabwe Copyright 2001, All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Cisco, Cisco Systems, Post-Routing, Pre-Routing, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or Web site are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (0108R) SPS 10/2001