Sytel’s CCaaS
Architecture
Automation, Engineered for Scale
CCaaS Architecture Features
A summary of key features of Sytel product architecture, why these are important and what differentiates Sytel from other contact center vendors/ Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) providers.
Automation, Automation, Automation!
A key principle of SCC is that anything that can be automated is automated. Why? Because the increasing complexity of even small contact centers means that it is no longer viable to manage session routing and agent workload manually in real-time.
This system-wide, real-time automation is effectively Artificial Intelligence (AI), that:
- achieves optimal results without having to build processes/ customization/ configuration on top of the core functionality
- releases supervisors to manage interaction quality rather than software.
1. Rock solid foundation
Sytel is a specialist in core contact center functionalities – predictive dialer, ACD, blending – and their delivery as native cloud services.
SCC is a unified platform, with all components systematically produced by the same team from a consistent framework, talking the same language, and sharing a common API set.
- This solid foundation offers rich integration capabilities, allowing any and all peripheral capabilities – speech recognition, CRM, AI analytics, etc – to be added in as required.
- Built with a common code base, this cohesive platform delivers high stability/reliability with high uptime, essential for delivering on client SLAs, with peace of mind that things will work as expected. Clients of our partners can stay productive with minimal downtime, and their agents can deliver consistent, high quality customer care.
2. Comprehensive, robust APIs
APIs are integral to the design of SCC, being used internally by all Sytel components. Refined over decades, they are robust, mature and battle-hardened.
They allow integration with any business touchpoint, e.g. conversational AI, WFM, CRM, business database, reporting.
And they are designed to cope gracefully with the inherent communication challenges of any web-based communication.
- The whole platform is built on solid APIs, using a standard, well thought out API pattern, giving control across the board. This offers a clean, consistent and natural way to integrate any 3rd party product, and in days and weeks, not months.
- Flexibility allows partners to service a broad range of clients, from small start-ups to large multinational corporates, on the same system.
- This flexibility and extensibility enables partners to differentiate, adding value with custom offerings. And it allows your customers to make use of any best-of-breed apps/ functionality, or required legacy apps.
- The APIs are standardised so that as the industry evolves and new innovations emerge, tools can be swapped out for others with minimal disruption and downtime.
- Your business is future-proofed, not being tied to a particular solution, and with no vendor lock-in. You are free to expand and add on as business requires.
3. System-wide, real-time automation
For outbound, automation means:
- dialing at the correct rate to maintain the target abandoned call rate (even 1%)
- keeping non-live calls (ans machine, busy, etc) away from agents, and automatically retrying when there is the best chance of success
- mixing fresh contacts, retries and lists in a way that maintains peak predictive performance.
- Automated predictive dialing delivers high agent productivity, allowing your clients to achieve more successful contacts per hour, at lower cost.
- Agent attrition is reduced and a higher sense of achievement and satisfaction promoted by less time wastage and fewer peaks and troughs through the day.
For inbound, the Automatic Session Distributor (ASD, the omnichannel equivalent of the ACD) performs smart routing according to a variety of inputs, e.g. configuration rules, IVR selection, skills matching, or database lookup.
- Incoming sessions are automatically connected to the best available agent to handle them, resulting in fewer customer transfers, less friction and faster resolution, which keeps customer satisfaction high.
- And if no agent is available, customers can be kept informed in-queue and offered choice, e.g. in leaving a message or receiving a callback, rather than waiting indefinitely or being connected to an agent who is unable to help.
- Database lookup offers endless possibilities for routing according to the customer’s profile, previous contact or purchase history, realising your business objectives with speed and precision while delivering personalised care to customers.
Universal real-time blending
The SCC engine is aware of the state of all queues, campaigns, SLAs, agent skills and work capacities.
This 360 degree awareness allows SCC to make optimal automated decisions and manage resource conflicts, far beyond human capability, in order to balance workload efficiently and effectively for each tenant/client across the entire client estate.
Known elsewhere as Intraday Automation, it is effectively real-time Workforce Management (WFM), optimised for performance at scale in the cloud, and is therefore more efficient and effective than integrating with 3rd party WFM tools.
- SCC delivers the best possible servicing of all queue SLAs for every client, with no human involvement. When an SLA is breached, agent resources are automatically re-assigned from other work in such a way as to cause the least disruption and maintain optimum balance. In this way, consumer wait times are minimised, threatened queues are not overloaded leaving customers stranded, and supervisors are freed from having to manage the estate.
- As the same pool of agents can be used for both inbound and outbound work, and for any contact channels, the problems of over- and under-staffing are mitigated, minimising wastage of agent time and staffing costs.
- And as no productivity is lost when client business scales up, the time and cost savings are compounded.
4. Highly-tuned deployment
SCC’s cloud footprint is engineered to be minimal, using our own advanced orchestration to minimise compute and memory resource requirements.
Sytel entered the hosted contact center market in the early 2010s and has built up a wealth of knowledge and experience to be able to craft a highly-tuned solution.
Efficiencies are achieved by…
- sharing resources across tenants
- asynchronous message handling, resulting in CPU processing ‘on demand’ rather than ‘always on’
- using database proxies, so as few services as possible are connected to the database
- minimal communication load, minimal contention, maximum throughput.
The provisioning model includes a web-native UI for all landlord-level administration, including for provisioning new tenants with their individual services, and media infrastructure with all its configuration.
Tenants also use the same tool, configured to enable tenant-level tasks.
- Efficiencies of scale bring lower cost, as fewer resources are required, allowing you to start small with minimal spend and increase as you scale up. ‘On demand’ processing allows you to pay only for what you use.
- The provisioning tools make cloud administration quick and easy, reducing the potential pain of scaling up.
- SCC’s design for the cloud provides essential high stability with high uptime, with the assurance that things will just work as expected. This allows partners to honour SLAs, keeping clients happy.
- SCC frees partners from being tied to any particular cloud vendor. Deployment can be to any major cloud vendor, even in a hybrid public/private/on-premise environment, and gives the freedom to expand, move and adapt as the business grows. The same software allows providers to service even the most complex requirements, so no matter what the market requires, partners are equipped for the future.
5. Global compliance
SCC provides tools and automated processes to achieve full compliance with any contact regulations, anywhere in the world. Dial decisions are immediate, so don’t impact predictive dialing performance. Compliance includes:
1. Auto-dialing regulations
SCC’s predictive dialer automatically adjusts so that the pre-set abandoned call rate for the dialed territory is never exceeded. And, uniquely in the market, achieves excellent performance even at 1%.
3. DNC lists
Contact lists are cleaned against DNC lists at any level – company, state, country. Any updates to a DNC list are actioned immediately.
2. Right time to call
SCC’s predictive dialer allows the setting of allowable call times, which are then followed automatically.
4. Build-your-own
Rules can be put in place for any complex regulations involving time, frequency, channel or any other criteria.
- SCC de-risks your business. Once configured, SCC will automatically follow all rules, leaving no room for human error, which eliminates the possibility of fines and protects customers from unnecessary annoyance.
6. Data transparency
All data, whether from a CRM or any other back-end system, is available to both applications and agents via real-time lookups, at any time.
Back-end systems can be wired directly into the platform, whether they are premise-based or in some other part of the cloud.
And data from these various sources can be interwoven cohesively within rich workflows on the same agent desktop, so that, for example, a collections app for voice can sit alongside an entirely different workflow for web chat.
- Everything agents need for a successful conversation can be made available in a ‘single pane’, interactive, on-screen workflow. Agents armed with the right information are better able to resolve customer queries first time, giving superior customer service.
- Integration with legacy data sources enables fast migration to cloud, without requiring an ‘all-or-nothing’ commitment, and without the need to re-engineer existing systems.
- Data transparency means informed agents, equipped with access to necessary systems and data within the same tool so they can resolve queries efficiently and effectively, in less time, with less stress.
Agents
To understand the journey the customer has taken to get to this particular interaction.
Supervisors
To understand why a customer may feel frustrated, and has escalated this call to a supervisor.
QA Analysts
To understand where the customer service experience can be improved, across the whole interaction journey.
The Routing Engine
To make decisions according to e.g. purchase history, or last agent contact.
7. AI processing and analytics
SCC utilises a range of AI processes within its automation, for example:
- for analysing customer history to decide on the best route
- for Natural Language Processing of text data for sentiment flagging
- for real-time transcription of voice conversations.
Additionally, any 3rd party app can be given access to any data from the system via SCC’s comprehensive APIs.
SCC’s built-in AI capabilities allow users to analyse interactions in real-time and get actionable feedback to assist agents in resolving queries quickly, first time.
To extend these capabilities, connected 3rd party AI apps can provide additional insight and guidance, either:
In real-timeFor example:
|
Post-interactionFor example:
|
8. 360° Security
SCC provides full security in all aspects of operation.
As with many business-critical processes within SCC, security aspects such as firewall configuration are automatic.
Customer data is fully compartmentalized, with both process separation and physical data separation at tenant level.
SCC has flexible strategies for sovereignty, with complete air-gapped ringfencing from ‘data only’ up to the entire estate.
Where customers keep data within their own siloed infrastructure, SCC provides data access components hosted within the customer environment, connected securely into public cloud using encryption protocols.
All sensitive data is accessible only by authorised apps and personnel, and under the complete control of the organisation.
No matter where your data is kept, or whether your infrastructure is in the cloud or on-premise, SCC’s data security is solid, inspiring full confidence and bringing peace of mind, with no compromise.
9. System management
Day-to-day running of the system is easy and accessible by design, even for service providers hosting SCC themselves. All functionality is managed through the web-based portal, either at landlord or tenant/client level.
All components are designed to withstand the inherent instability of communication over the internet, and provide:
- alerts at all levels, highlighting situations that may need attention
- optimised, centralised logging at all levels, showing errors and configuration issues.
SCC’s workload automation reduces the management overhead to simply monitoring the system, freeing supervisors and administrators to manage interaction quality.
Any system issue is transparent and can be investigated at either tenant or landlord level leading to swift resolution, which maximises uptime and protects client SLAs.
Find out more about what Sytel offers:
Latest posts
Intraday Automation – Real-Time Workforce Management
Real-Time Automation for Workforce Management (WFM)
AI and Automation in the Contact Center – Part 2
AI and Automation in the Contact Center – Part 1
Predictive Dialing and Cell Phones – A Way Forward
