One day, this will be as normal as picking up the phone.
Corporations want to change call center applications from manual intervention systems to automated solutions that tap the power of the Internet and the Web.
Interest in Web-enabled call centers is rising because companies are marketing more and more of their wares on the Internet. When potential purchasers show interest in a product, a company wants to transform them from prospects into buyers. To do that, a customer service representative may need to talk to the person, answer questions and
assuage any fears. For that to occur, a company must connect its Web servers and call center systems.
The change could offer new revenue opportunities for resellers. Corporations will need help moving from traditional- to Web-enabled call center applications.
When customers find information of interest, they can enter personal data and later receive a call from a customer service representative. Products that offer this option have begun to make their way into the market.
A second option is for a Web page to route an inquiry directly to an agent via an IP telephony service. However, IP telephony is
an emerging technology and does not offer as clear a connection as a public-switched telephone network connection, said industry observers.
Response time can be another problem with IP telephony, experts said. After a customer enters information on a Web page, the request may move off the Internet, onto the telephone network and to a company's call center. The corporation needs equipment to translate a Web message into a format understood by the call center application's
database. Next, the request is queued up until an agent is free to place the call.
There are numerous places for potential slowdowns. A request could travel slowly through the Internet if traffic is heavy; a call center computer may not have sufficient processing power to translate the message, and a flood of Web calls could overwhelm agents. Suppliers have just begun to tackle such issues.
In addition to technical concerns, the new call center applications raise managerial questions. For example, corporations may have to retrain their call center staffs.
Because of these issues, resellers are shying away from these products. Information Products Inc., a Hartford, Conn., reseller
that specializes in CTI applications, has had a lot of success selling call center applications to small and midsize companies.
We are now watching how Web-enabled call center applications will evolve and expect to adopt it eventually. But right now, it is not
mature enough for use to offer to our customers. |
