Mapping A Migration To IP

October, 2010

No call center in the world wants to be left out of the multimedia IP revolution. This blog maps a viable and graceful migration path for contact centers heading toward IP.
In our visits around the world recently, we have met many people who say “Yes, the multimedia IP contact center is all very well, but what about our investment in legacy telephony equipment. We just can’t afford to rip it out and replace it.” No call center in the world wants to be left out of the multimedia revolution, but many need a viable and graceful migration path from proprietary protocols & old software that isn’t properly joined up.

Historically, the approach of big telecoms vendors has been to offer customer premises equipment, central office switching, etc, at a substantial discount in order to lock customers into their proprietary world. Then the vendor is free to charge exorbitant amounts for maintenance & upgrades in perpetuity. This has been palatable for most call centers until quite recently, when such hooked centers looked over the fence and saw their neighbours free to romp through the lush green meadows of IP, free to integrate with any service that came their way, able to pick and choose the functionality that was right for them, and they thought “Hang on! Why can’t we do this?”

Contact centers faced with this in countries where investment capital is easier to come by, on the whole have bitten the bullet and gone for ‘rip and replace’. Expensive, but it’s the cost of staying in business. But what about the other guys for whom previous investment is substantial and capex is a big challenge?

Sytel believe that the solution lies in adopting a switching and media platform that interfaces to both legacy telephony systems and ISDN using SIP protocols.

We encourage folk to embrace SIP soft-switching by build a switching core around IP, and migrate away from legacy systems. Follow the Sytel 5 step plan:

  1. Stop upgrading and maintaining your legacy system. You are paying for your past, not investing in the future.
  2. Assess the IP network available to you. Is it robust enough for your projected voice and data needs? Select the right service provider, who is solid and experienced in both TDM and IP and can help you through the migration process.
  3. Investigate how to mediate TDM to SIP locally. Legacy equipment will require TDM-SIP gateways, but the good news is that VoIP gateways will be standard, and therefore cheap and locally available.
  4. Any 3rd party application integration will have had to talk TAPI or TSAPI. This will either need re-coding OR framing in a hosting tool (like Sytel’s Softdial Scripter).
  5. Legacy handsets will be redundant. Softphones will replace them, but migrating to SIP also requires a PC to power a softphone which, if you have been running agent terminals and handsets, will require a little more investment.

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) – multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ – rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale

  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers – global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc – fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Optimise agent usage and balance workloads in real-time without human intervention, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care