Contact Center

So I’m currently starting up a company and need to set up a small (5 seat) call center. One of the first things I have found in my research is that the scope of call centers have expanded, and they are now called contact centers. This accounts for the integration of email, and web chat to the traditional phone connections. The other big dynamic is the extensive use of VoIP. Using voice over IP not only removes the long-distance charges from the equation, but more important it drastically improves CTI or Computer Telephony Integration. Customer contacts require quick and convenient access to customer records. VoIP makes things such as screen pops, and historical contact automation much easier.

Just as the web evened the playing field ten years ago, products such as Customer Interaction Center from Interactive Intelligence promise to do the same for the call … I mean contact center.

I’m getting a demo on this product tomorrow, and will follow-up with my impression, but from what I’ve seen on their web site, it’s pretty amazing. It appears that their hosted service offers variable pricing for what might otherwise be a heavy six figure investment. Essentially all services are provided over your internet connection via a web interface. Phone calls are routed to a SIP phone which you buy and plug into your PC’s USB interface. What this means is that you can station a call … I mean contact center employee wherever there’s a high-speed internet connection. I suspect this is similar to the technology that Jet Blue uses to keep its work-from-home ticket agents productive.

The administrative interface appears to have all of the advances agent tracking features of a high-end, in-house Lucent or Nortel system. This would of course be very important to

My challenge over the next couple of weeks:

• Is this contact center solution as good as it sounds?
• What is the cost structure?
• What exactly is involved in getting my client phones ringing on my agents’ SIP phones.
• What is the best web based/enabled software for small business CRM and accounting?