IP Contact Centers: Matching Performance with Promise. Wayne Lockhart Senior Product Manager Empirix Inc.

Transcription

1 IP Contact Centers: Matching Performance with Promise Wayne Lockhart Senior Product Manager Empirix Inc. 1

2 What Will Be Covered Why IP Contact Centers? Costs, Applications The quality perspective: Risks and Challenges Measurements and Metrics Tips preparing for IP Contact Center Deployment 2

3 What Drives Contact Center Spending (2005 Global Revenue) Customer Contact Value ~$300B (Source:Jupiter) Contact Center Spend ~$50B (Source: Datamonitor) 85% contacts over the phone, despite growing push to web ~55M phone contacts/yr; ~$60/contact average value ( ) Contact volume and caller expectations rising IT spend in Contact Centers ~ $15B (Source: Datamonitor) Contact Center Equipment Spend ~$7.5B (Source: Datamonitor, Frost & Sullivan) WorkForce Mgmt, Call Monitoring, Wallboards, ~$1.5B Manage the people ACD, IVR, CTI (screen-pop & routing), Speech, Services ~$6B Manage calls, avoid labor where possible CRM spend ~$7.5B in Contact Centers (~$16B overall) (Source: Datamonitor, Reuters) 3

4 IP Transforms the Contact Center North American Contact Center Market Growth of New Agent Seats: IP vs TDM TDM IP 4

5 Defining IP Contact Centers: Anatomy of a Call Center NMS tools 5

6 Moving to the IP Contact Center TDM Solutions Voice Encoding - G.711 (ulaw/alaw) Circuit Switched Signaling Protocols - SS7, ISDN PSTN Switches Private Branch Exchange Analog/Digital Telephones VoIP Solutions Codecs - G.723, G.726, G Shared Data/Voice Network TCP/IP and VoIP Protocols - SIP, H.323, SCCP, MGCP, Megaco VoIP Gateways and Routers IP Telephony Servers - IP-PBX Clusters - IP Telephony Services IP Phones and softphones 6

7 IP Contact Center Benefits: Configuration Flexibility Remote Agent Centralized Equipment Hosting Enterprise Data centers Branch offices Remote agents Outsourcer Service Provider Agents Agents Agents Agents Agents Agents 7

8 Are IP Contact Centers Driven by New Applications? SAME OLD applications, made more practical and more real: Routing Reporting Dialing Recording/Logging Disaster Recovery IVR & Speech CTI CRM Remote Agent Click-to-talk Tapping non-agents Multi-channel Unified Messaging Collaboration with callers Video Wireless Agents Presence / IM / personal rules..... Actually new: Presence from callers Situational Logging Location ( breadcrumbs and geofences ) Dramatically changed Multi-site contact centers Outsourcing, Homesourcing Costs and Complexity 8

9 The Quality Perspective Quality encompasses most of the -ities Reliability Security Usability Availability Manageability Performance Scalability Extensibility Supportability Maintainability these are attributes of a system; they do nothing by themselves IP is a how rather than a what There are MANY quality implications of IP Contact Center approaches, both positive and negative 9

10 Risks/Challenges of IP Contact Centers General VoIP quality risks: voice quality, manageability, security, troubleshooting, IT skill set Interoperability, more multi-vendor risks Technology and standards are still evolving fast Failover and continuity with centralized IP-PBXs Generally more moving parts & more boxes More vulnerable to infrastructure down time Make sure you have a rock-solid converged data network More frequent new releases Wider variation in caller technology People management At-home agents, single multi-site queues, outsourcers 10

11 Common Pitfalls and Issues During IP Contact Center Deployment Lack of organizational readiness Need for Infrastructure and Application responsibilities VoIP is just another application on the network Provide staff cross training and tools Expecting telephony-grade support Plan to test and system management Depending on single-shot network assessment Test with actual VoIP traffic to detect misconfigurations Focus on infrastructure only, not applications Focus on Packet-Level, Call-Level, Application-Level testing Lack of lifecycle view View deployment as set of concrete phases 11

12 VoIP Quality in General Still a Moving Target Main Quality Focus Areas for VoIP today - Ensuring voice quality - Ensuring that new applications perform smoothly on VoIP infrastructure. - Ensuring the ability to troubleshoot 12

13 Measuring quality Call paths have moved from Fixed (Hardwired) to Dynamic (IP based) Pesq Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (ITU-T) MOS Mean Opinion Score QoS Assured delivery 13

14 Recursive Testing / Assurance Phase Service Trial Service Turn Up Service Ramp Tune Up Concern Develop/ Qualify Detect Problems Troubleshoot Performance Monitoring Fault Management Customer Care Test Call Generation Network & Service Emulation Actions Diagnostics & Analysis 24 x 7 x 365 Monitoring Service Assurance Methods Active Passive Active 14

15 Shared Bandwidth 15

16 Blended Networks Network Operations Network Engineering Productivity - Reduce the time to diagnose problems Network Performance and Efficiency - Set and monitor benchmarks for the network or any segment Service Quality Assurance - Key call control and voice quality metrics Customer Care - Quick visibility into each subscribers call history Signaling / Call Control Access Network Signaling Media IP Network Access Network Session Border Controller Gateway PSTN Peer IP Network 16

17 Multiple Carriers at Multiple Layers Service Provider Subscriber Call TDM Carrier Hosted Data Center Fort Worth, TX Data Center Washington, DC Data Center Atlanta, GA ACD Quality Monitoring Data Network Siebel SMS, & Knowledge Mgmt. ACD Quality Monitoring ACD CTI Components Web- Based IVR App Server CTI Components Workforce Mgmt. CTI Components VOIP Carrier 1 VOIP Carrier 2 Call Center Vendor 1 POP - TBD Call Center Vendor 2 POP - TBD Call Center Vendor 3 POP - TBD ` ` ` 17

18 Service Assurance Visibility into what is actually happening Identify who/what is responsible Quantify the problem Prioritize actions to reduce business impact Manage the end-to-end contact center infrastructure User User Experience Experience Voice Voice and and web web transactions, transactions, active active & & passive passive Application Application Voice Voice Quality Impact Quality Impact Application MOS MOS / / Pesq Application functionality Pesq Measurement functionality Measurement and and monitoring routing, routing, calls monitoring of calls offered, of call offered, calls call bandwidth calls handled, handled, calls bandwidth availability calls abandoned, abandoned, calls availability and and quality calls in quality of of transmission in queue, queue, etc. etc. transmission Application Application Health Health Health Health & & availability, availability, application-specific application-specific data, data, i.e. i.e. connection connection counts, counts, thread thread pools, pools, logs, logs, etc. etc. System System Health Health Business Business Business Business Information Information Technology Information Technology Information Technology Technology Availability, Availability, Performance, Performance, CPU, CPU, Memory, Memory, Disk, Disk, etc... etc... 18

19 Multiple Carriers at Multiple Layers Service Provider Subscriber Call User User Experience Experience Voice Voice Quality Quality Application Application Impact Impact Application Application Health Health System System Health Health TDM Carrier Hosted Data Center Fort Worth, TX Data Center Washington, DC Data Center Atlanta, GA ACD Quality Monitoring Data Network Siebel SMS, & Knowledge Mgmt. ACD Quality Monitoring ACD CTI Components Web- Based IVR App Server CTI Components Workforce Mgmt. CTI Components VOIP Carrier 1 VOIP Carrier 2 Call Center Vendor 1 POP - TBD Call Center Vendor 2 POP - TBD Call Center Vendor 3 POP - TBD ` ` ` 19

20 Troubleshooting Voice Quality Still a critical need for enterprises Look at all the metrics of RTP exactly as transmitted on the network Understand the end user s experience Become proactive about problem prevention Packet Loss? Jitter? Delay? Voice Quality? MOS and R-Factor Measurement is critical for problem resolution 20

21 Common Application Test Areas Signaling latency speed of dial tone, speed of call transfer, etc. Reliability of application information delivery screen pops, information elements use for routing, etc. Application performance IVR responsiveness, Application performance under load, etc. Impact of VoIP on applications speech recognition accuracy with packet loss, conference bridge loudest-speaker detection, etc. All-paths testing correct configuration of all forwarding, hunting, routing, voic and messaging configuration, etc. 21

22 Queuing Theory 101 vs Larger queues are much more efficient 1 group of 70 can match 10 groups of 10 = 30% savings!!! Historical Tension: effectiveness vs efficiency Specific skills vs larger groups -> multi-skill assignments help Multiple levels of queuing (pre- and post- ) less effective than a complete view IP contact centers can provide a centralized control point without multiple levels, network TB&T, etc. 22

23 An Important Metric: Customer Perceived Latency (CPL) The length of time between the end of a caller's input and the successful response from the system, as perceived by the caller A crucial element of usability and the customer experience that is directly tied to application performance What size pizza? Large And what do you want on it? Pepperoni Great CPL = 1.8 sec CPL = 1.7 sec 23

24 Endpoints Where are they? Hosted Voice Portal Premise Voice Portal Hosted Call Center Outsourced Call Center Premise Call Center(s) Work at home agents Gateways Call Loggers Expert Workers 24

25 Contact Center Application Performance Testing scenarios - Stimulus / Response through application call flow Test Prompt Identification Was the correct prompt delivered? Are alternate prompts allowed? What is the quality of the delivered prompt? Prompt Metrics Response Time how quickly is the prompt delivered Response Length how long is the delivered prompt Data Validation What information was delivered? Was the information correct? What is the speed of screen pops? Application Architecture Switch IVR / VRU Middleware Telephony Server DB Server CTI Speech Servers - TextToSpeech - Recognition - Others 25

26 IP-IVR Before Intermittent BIG Delays Under Load :24 16:48 19:12 21:36 0:00 2:24 4:48 7:12 9:36 12:00 26

27 After Speedy Performance Just By Rearranging Processes :24 16:48 19:12 21:36 0:00 2:24 4:48 7:12 9:36 12:00 27

28 Preparing for IP Contact Center Deployment Train someone on your staff about IP contact center technologies. If possible, establish a lab for evaluation, benchmarking, troubleshooting, and training. Equip it with representative versions of your deployment configuration, and with good testing and troubleshooting tools. Review options for system management. Try to roll out system management tools and processes that work throughout your migration process. Technology adoption direction. If you haven t done so, establish an overall direction for your contact center, including technology direction, and then define priorities and timeframes for completion. It is not necessary to build a business case for new technologies up front, but it is important to do so as you near the timeframe for adoption. Virtualization If you think that work-at-home or remote agents are in your future, start a pilot now. Identify a top-notch employee with an interest in telecommuting and initiate the arrangement. Stability and Recovery Look over business continuity plans for your contact center. If you don t have a plan in place, you should, and IP contact centers can provide a powerful way to insure yourself against disasters. 28

29 Key Points to Take Home IP Contact Centers DO work Big benefits in flexibility of configuration Few truly new applications, but can be much more practical Many quality implications Positives: Business continuity, centralized management,. Negatives: VoIP challenges, emerging technology & standards, more moving pieces Does not change many of the challenges for running a contact center Provides many more options, and makes managing the technology more important Queuing metrics and CPL will become more important 29

30 Empirix Focus Empirix helps organizations deploy complex communications technologies with confidence. Web Applications VoIP and Enhanced Services Contact Center Voice & Agent Applications 30

31 Contact: Wayne Lockhart QUESTIONS? 31