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Solution Overview: Geomant Contact Expert for Microsoft Lync Server

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Copyright © 2011 Geomant Australia Pty Limited Page 1 of 13

Solution Overview: Geomant

Contact Expert for Microsoft

Lync Server

Solution Summary

Contact Expert is a fully-featured multi-media contact centre software solution for the Microsoft Unified Communications Platform. Leveraging Microsoft’s latest Lync Server 2010, Contact Expert provides a managed customer interaction environment through the use of contact centre functionality and a consistent user experience. Moreover, Contact Expert provides a ‘big-picture’ reporting tool to monitor how customers communicate with the organisation and report how the organisation manages the customer interactions.

Contact Expert can be deployed as a simple voice channel contact centre solution. Alternatively Contact Expert can be optioned with support for multimedia channels such as email, SMS and web-chat (Q1 2012). Regardless of the media channel used, Contact Expert provides a richly feature contact centre solution and the sophisticated ACD optimises routing strategies to ensure customer interactions are always connected to the most appropriate agent. All telephony and UC functions within the contact centre are achieved through Lync so when the agent signs into Contact Expert, they are automatically signed in to Lync. Tight integration with Lync provides a consistent user experience and Contact Expert provides a dedicated operator application enabling agents to manage all customer interactions through a single desktop GUI. The desktop GUI provides access to all the rich Contact Expert features. It includes an embedded web browser so that agents can follow call scripts, access customer information and call history, and to input or update customer records. Once a call is completed it is either closed with business configurable wrap-up (call closure) codes or the agent can schedule a call-back.

Contact Expert also provides sophisticated contact centre management and actionable information through administrator and supervisor roles. Real time and historic reports can be accessed to monitor service levels, agent performance, queues, wait times etc or presented in real time via a virtual desktop wallboard. In addition Contact Expert provides full call recording capabilities for compliance, dispute resolution as well as Supervisor call observing for training and coaching purposes.

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Contact Expert – Key Benefits

1. Simple and rapid to deploy,

2. Lower entry cost and highly cost effective for small to medium contact centres and helpdesks from 5 agents upwards.

3. Tightly integrated with Lync.

4. Synchronises Agent status with Lync ‘presence’. 5. Leverages Lync telephony platform.

6. Extends the Lync ROI.

7. Unifies agent/customer communications within the Microsoft Lync environment.

Contact Expert extends Microsoft UC platform with UC enabled Customer

Care:

Contact Expert –Features at a glance

(refer product configurator for licence options)  Uses Microsoft’s Lync enterprise voice telephony platform.

 Supports multiple inbound queues and multiple outbound campaigns.

 Offers multiple resources: human agents, automated agents (SMS) and IVR.

 Multiple channels: voice, email and SMS. Note: Web Chat scheduled for Q1 2012.

 Unified agent desktop application (both full screen and toolbar).

 Self-managed contact centre through web based administration and supervisor roles.

 Comprehensive dialing rules – preview and progressive.

 Definable agent soft skills and skill levels.

 Fixed or dynamic customer contact lists.

 Comprehensive reporting suite for real-time and historic reporting.

 Comprehensive queue performance and effectiveness measurement.

 Simple creation of call flows through graphical editor tools.

 Call flow simulation for pre ‘go-live’ queue testing.

 Automated contact list import and export.

 Multiple ACD strategies including, skills, time and event based routing.

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Continued…

 Comprehensive queue messaging including voice recordings and Microsoft’s Text to Speech.

 Sophisticated rules based and ‘on-demand’ call recording features.

 Call recording (Meta data) fully integrated with the customer interaction history.

 Embedded web browser for integrating online applications into the agent desktop.

 Single agent login (Contact Expert and LYNC).

 Embedded agent information wallboard.

 Multichannel/multimode IVR with call routing and database dipping (integration). Note: IVR self-managed design tool scheduled for Q1 2012.

 Simple integration with organisation systems.

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Product Positioning

Contact Expert is tightly integrated with Microsoft’s Unified Communications platform, Lync Server 2010. All communication functions are achieved through Lync. When the agent logs into Contact Expert, they are automatically logged in to Lync and all inbound and outbound calls are Lync voice calls.

Tight integration with Lync allows all customer interactions to be handled through the dedicated unified agent desktop and means contact centre agents have access to all the rich Lync collaborative tools to help them achieve first call resolution.

To synchronise agent activity with Lync presence, Contact Expert utilises four additional custom Lync ‘Presence States’; Available, Conversation, On-Break and Admin. When the agent is in any phase of a customer interaction, these presence states are updated automatically. Data is maintained on agents’ historic presence states for subsequent analysis.

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Contact Expert Unified Desktop Agent

Contact Expert agents use a familiar Windows ribbon based application incorporating an embedded web browser, soft phone and dedicated controls for all agent accessible functions of the Contact Expert application.

Contact Expert agent desktop includes:

1. Embedded web browser for application integration or running agent scripts. Scripts can guide agents through a sequence of web forms which can be used to deliver or collect data from the customer.

2. Customer Interaction History panel. Often referred to as a “screen-pop”, this area provides information about the calling party and a full history of all previous interactions with the customer. Contact Expert includes an integrated SQL database which is used to store contact information and maintain customer history in addition to recording all contact centre related activities and metrics which are accessed by the in-build reporting suite.

3. Call control soft-phone to make and receive calls as well as managing call transfers etc. Functions include: agent login and log out, call answer, call drop, hold party, transfer and conference and to change agent state to an auxiliary mode such as when agent goes on “break”.

4. Task related pop-up windows: close customer interactions with business specific call closure codes, display data and historical information about the customer (e.g. for successfully established calls: time stamp, agent, closure code; for unsuccessful call: number of unsuccessful attempts, timestamp of last attempt);

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confirmation from agents. The other type of messages are similar to emails, they are stored in database, cached until agent logs into the system and require confirmation from agents.

6. Simple integration with 3rd party CRM applications. The agent application offers client side integration with customers’ existing third party CRM systems such as Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com etc.

7. Tabs to select business specific auxiliary codes so that agent time can be monitored against activity codes.

8. Tabs to access agent history and activity breakdown to enable agent to monitor their work levels and recent customer interactions etc.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)

Contact Expert’s sophisticated software-based Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) capabilities ensure maximum productivity and enhanced customer service. There are a number of different routing strategies depending on whether the call flow is inbound or outbound:

• Skills-based routing • Most idle agent routing • Least occupied agent routing

• Preferred agent routing for call backs • Priority queues (for VIPs etc.). ACD Strategies

Contact Expert supports multiple routing strategies to automatically distribute requests to agents. The currently available ACD strategies are listed in the following table.

Strategy Is used to distribute … Results in … Most idle Agent,

least occupied Agent Outbound tasks Evens out agent utilisation in outbound environments Most recent Agent

inbound requests

Delivering each customer to the agent who communicated with them most recently Highest skilled Agent Delivering each customer to the agent who can provide the highest level of service Preferred Agent rescheduled requests Delivering each callback request to the agent who scheduled the callback

Multi-media

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Voice media

For voice based media, Contact Expert uses a telephony connector to Microsoft’s Lync enterprise voice platform. Voice calls can be received and initiated within the contact centres various queues and campaigns. Calls are distributed based on the routing strategy of the inbound queue called.

If calls can’t be completed or resolved at first point of contact then the agent can schedule a ‘callback request’. Contact Expert will then automatically serve this callback to the agent at the scheduled time and date.

Agents can also choose to keep a recording of the customer voice call when the call is wrapped as well as reporting on call quality for future analysis.

Email media

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SMS media

SMS media is supported through virtual (automated) agents. Human operators are not used on SMS campaigns. Workflows of SMS campaigns can easily be created by using a well-designed graphical user interface. This editor tool enables administrators;

1. To define SMS campaigns as request-response interactions between the Contact Expert software and the customer. After sending an outbound SMS to the customer, Contact Expert is waiting for an answer. When an inbound SMS is received by Contact Expert, the next outbound SMS can be sent;

2. To define outbound SMS templates which include references to database columns. These references are replaced with the exact values in real time (when the SMS is sent);

3. To define content analysis for the inbound SMS. The next SMS sent to the customer can be defined based on the result of this content analysis;

4. To define timeouts (as absolute time values) for inbound SMS. This enables to provide the latest time instant of accepting an answer for each outbound SMS.

Scalable

Contact Expert provides an ideal solution for organisations with Microsoft Lync Server deployed, requiring dedicated contact centre functionality or similar functionality for a subset of users; IT Support, Finance, sales etc. Contact Expert can be cost-effectively deployed for as few as five users, whilst offering full contact centre functionality, and scalability to hundreds of users.

Queue Management

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Queue Design

A sophisticated queue design and scripting tool readily allows specific script scenarios to be created for the various queues. This offers:

• A sophisticated graphical user-interface to define the data, words and pictures that guide the agent through a call.

• Script definition for each media type.

• Requires no programming skills; allows queues to be managed by contact centre managers and supervisors, and enables fast and reactive script amendment.

• Script simulation facility allows scripts to be tested before they are implemented. Inbound Queues

Inbound queues are usually associated with fixed customer service numbers and can be fronted by IVR to direct calls. Inbound customer service centres usually encompass multiple disciplines and Contact Expert supports multiple inbound queue scenarios.

Outbound Campaigns

With Contact Expert, outbound campaigns can be rapidly created and run against campaign defined parameters such as duration, time of day, day of week etc. Two types of dialling algorithm are supported:

1. Preview Dialling: Contact Expert presents the agent with customer details before a call is initiated. This allows agents to be aware of call and customer details before the call is initiated. 2. Progressive Dialling: Contact Expert initiates calls, and checks for a successful connection before

transferring to agent. Call classification detects busy, answering machine etc., and automatically reschedules unsuccessful calls. In a large campaign this greatly improves agent productivity.

Call Recording and Call Observing-Coaching

Contact Expert provides Inbound and Outbound call recording for compliance, training and quality assurance. It performs both rules based and ‘on-demand’ recording. Different recording rules can be specified for different queues and individual agents. Call recording metadata is fully integrated with the contact history so supervisors can readily see which conversations were recorded and can play or download the recorded audio file directly through their web based supervisor role. Supervisors also have the opportunity to listen in to ongoing customer/agent interactions for call observing purposes.

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Comprehensive Real Time & Historic reporting

Contact Expert features comprehensive real time and historic reporting to ensure contact centre service levels and agent productivity are both measured and optimised. Real time reporting and alerting are available to both agents and supervisors and can be queue specific or agent specific. There is an embedded agent information wallboard (‘Ticker” style). This board is used to display statistical information about the contact center state (e.g. number of call in different directions, number of staffed operator). Messages sent to the operator are also displayed on this board. These messages can take the form of simple multicast messages which are not stored in database and not requiring confirmation from operators. The other type of messages are similar to emails, they are stored in database, cached until operator logs into the system and require confirmation from operators.

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The following reports are standard with Contact Expert. Note: reports can be filtered through parameter selection:

1. Campaign (outbound) and Queue (inbound) reports a. Campaign/Queue status report

b. Real-Time Queue report c. Service level report

d. Business Tag report (Call Summary Codes) 2. Agent reports

a. Agent status time report b. Real-time agent report c. Agent history report d. Agent login history report e. Agent performance report f. Agent utilisation report

g. Agent complex report (Detailed report)

h. Report Document (Full team - all agents - report output as a PDF 3. Voice reports

a. Response level report b. Answer ratio report c. Daily interval report d. Call outcome report e. Real-time call report f. First call resolution report g. Call detail records report h. Queuing time report i. Abandoned call report 4. Email reports

a. Email report

b. Detailed email report c. Email history search 5. SMS reports a. SMS report b. Detailed SMS report c. SMS history search 6. IVR reports* a. IVR report

b. Detailed IVR report 7. Contact History

a. Contact records details search b. Call Recordings

c. Customer Interaction Evaluation Forms 8. Quality Summary reports

a. Call quality report b. Recording quality report c. Service quality report

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Contact Expert Administration

Contact Expert is designed so that organisations can have full control over the day to day running of their contact centre. A web based administration interface provides access to all the system parameters. The web based administration enables the

specification of:

1. Resources such as human agents, IVRs, IVR channels, automated agents, voice, email and SMS gateways;

2. Inbound queues and/or outbound campaigns with all of their specific configuration parameters.

3. Dial rules determining the valid queue access times and how calls are handled for default and failover scenarios.

4. Skills to group agents into different sets and

assign skills to queues. It is important to emphasise that Contact Expert implements its own soft skills. This means that Contact Expert does not require the existence of PBX level skills or ACD; 5. Fixed or dynamic contact lists. Dynamic contact lists allows starting inbound queues even with

empty contact list and append customers to the list dynamically during operation. Fixed contact lists can be used to specify which customers have permission to reach the service provided by the given queues.

Contact Management

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Architecture Overview

Contact Expert extends Microsoft UC platform with UC enabled Customer Care. The application Integrates with Microsoft Lync Server using the following system architecture:

Component integration:

Contact Expert Agent (Windows Application): extended to use the COM based Microsoft OC Automation API. A ‘thick’ client for the agent desktop.

Telephony Connector Server: Implemented using Microsoft LYNC UCMA 3.0 API Telephony Recorder: Implemented using Microsoft LYNC UCMA 3.0 API

IVR Server: Implemented using Microsoft LYNC UCMA 3.0 API Component roles:

 Lync provides call control and VoIP signaling.  Connector offers ACD ingress and dialer egress.

References

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