OPEX Hosted Call Centre Solutions

Q. Hi Paul, I’d like you to imagine I am a novice in this marketplace. I could be running a call centre for instance, but want to streamline my operation and learn a little about the how’s and why’s of Hosted services. What can you tell me.

Paul: Let’s go into some background first, and go from there.

There are two primary technology environments inside any business that have to communicate: one is telephony and the other is the IT environment.  For telephony we’re looking at telephones, modems, things that connect to the network but all in all people think of this as voice.

On the IT side you’re talking about database applications specific to running a business. People tend to think of that as data.  Today, using ISDN and VoIP the two are being combined under the one umbrella.  However, people still perceive them as different things – telecoms for voice and computers for data.

Today, every business goes out and buys a telephone system and in making that decision about what telephone system to purchase they have to look at their voice applications and what they want to do with their inbound and outbound voice calls.  There are questions in people’s minds today about what is the future of voice technology going to look like; historically it’s been something called TDM* and the future looks like something called VoIP. There is the question of which of these technologies to go for, what are the kind of applications that you’re going to be able to run on those technologies and what services as a business are going to needed in the future.

And then there is the issue of staying ahead of the competition.

There can be significant costs in setting up a business to be able to compete in a given environment, so we are looking at capital expenditure to buy in technologies, both IT technologies and Telecom technologies necessary to be able to compete.

As a hosting company we move with the times, take on the burden of capital expenditure so our customers can just get on with what they do best.

Q. Explain the value of VoIP to me..

Paul: It seems that many people are lured by the perception that VoIP is free, however unless you use a client like Skype it is just another method of voice transmission.

VoIP is still an immature technology.  It was originally designed for video conferencing.  Video conferencing required a protocol to allow people to actually tie up video data with voice data and synchronise the two.

However with traditional telephony you have dedicated bandwidth, you have copper or an ISDN line between the connected points.  With VoIP you have to deal with something called contention ratios, which is where the amount of data that you’re sending has to compete for bandwidth with other data. This can give you latency issues.

Latency is the lag in the time it takes for the data to get from point A to point B.  Over a standard telephone the human ear can handle about 126 Milliseconds of latency before the conversation starts to sound really affected  Over standard telephone you have around about 40 Milliseconds of latency, which is virtually real time as far as the human ear is concerned.

The problem with VoIP, is that when you take voice and turn it into data to travel down the network, you have to go through a codec – you have to basically convert it from analogue, which is what you hear in the real world, to digital.  Every time you do that there is a certain amount of processing power required which takes about 30 Milliseconds. So, if you have more than 2 or 3 codex in the network between caller A and caller B, you will have latency beyond that of which people will be able to accept it as a valid service.  You can also get a certain amount of data that just disappears and so the voice can break-up.

Q: So how does this all relate to hosted services?

Paul: Hosting actually sits and straddles both technologies, so a true hosting company should be able to provide VoIP and TDM options, which gives the customer the choice of which type of service to go for.

Another benefit of being with a hosted company is that they would have installed systems within co-location facilities that are built specifically for housing data centres, so they are conditioned units to control the ambient temperature. They have high speed, high capacity data network switches that can carry VoIP traffic, and the whole environment is geared to high performance and high availability.  So, from a client’s point of view a hosted service has already dealt with all of the technical issues with regards to what to buy, how to set it up and where to install it.

Q: Typically what sort of telephony services can you get on a hosted basis?

Paul: Telephony applications are all based on four fundamental building blocks.

1.    Switching and routing which some people think of as ACD.  The ability to route calls intelligently – switching and routing is a primary function and it’s what telecoms is all about.
2.    Messaging, the ability to play people messages, deliver messages or take messages.  Messaging includes things like voicemail, fax, email, SNS.
3.    IVR (Interactive Voice Response).  Everyone knows it as “press 1 for sales, press 2 for accounts” it’s the ability for someone to go through a menu driven system, to choose options and allow them to orientate themselves without the assistance of a live person.  Historically that’s been done using D2F (press 1 press 2) but this is changing to speech recognition..
4.    Conferencing, which gives you the ability for more than one person to talk to each other at the same time.

So, with those four building blocks we can then think of any telephony application, any communication application imaginable and we can build it.  Typically at the moment the major areas of interest are inbound ACD – the ability to handle inbound caller traffic and distribute it to the right individuals/departments and to report on that and to understand the effect on the business of your inbound traffic.

There’s the outbound side which is the ability for you to connect to the outside world and dialler technologies like predictive dialling.

Q: What kinds of companies are going for Hosted services?

Most companies have room for hosted services in their setups:

You have the new company with the opportunity to install completely new technology. For them there is a serious decision as to whether they go for the capital expenditure route of buying physical systems to install in the new office, or whether they go for a hosted model where they avoid those.

You have the company with some old systems, some historical investment but a perception that they need to move upward and gain access to new applications and services, or that they need to enhance their existing platforms but don’t again want to go through the capital expenditure of upgrading or replacing their legacy systems and again, they are able to go to a hosted supplier that has already made that investment, that is moving with the latest technologies and can make these services available on a Pay As You Go basis that the business can now run as an operating expenditure.

I could go on, but you can see that it can be a sound technological and financial decision to go hosted.

Q: So people can put off making technological choices that might not have an answer right now?

Paul: Yes. With IVR systems, telephone systems, computer systems, CRM environments etc, a lot of work can go into understanding the technology. There are normally a number of different costs attached to that; there are the upfront costs of investment in consultancy, some upfront costs in buying systems.  Then there’s the actual cost of ownership – training, maintenance etc.  One of the most difficult things is actually what hardware technology to buy because it has to grow with you and allow you to fulfil the requirements of that technology.  Hosting provides you with an existing environment that has already been designed very effectively, so you avoid having to make a decision today that you can put off till tomorrow because with hosting you can go with existing platforms in technology –  but importantly you can choose the things that you want in the form of a shopping list, and go through a learning curve without having the initial investment of buying the hardware.

Q: Give me a scenario?

Paul: Let’s take as an example a virtual call centre.

A hosted service allows calls to be routed to different agents, for customers to feel as if they are in one environment whereas there is no need for the company to operate this way at all.

Billing and statistics also come from one central source, so it ties up all of the loose ends. Our call centre solutions involve all that hosted telephony can offer in one place.

Q: What are peoples fears about going for hosted services?

Paul: It seems complicated at the outset because there are so many possibilities on offer. That’s where we are here to help.

Q: Where do people start?

Paul: They would normally trial something like call recording because it’s not an intrusive application.  It’s something that happens in the background and doesn’t normally affect any of the existing processes. People can see benefits like access via the web to the recordings, stats as well as the reduced charges for their outbound telephony.

Q: So people can save money?

Paul: As a hosting company we generate lots of traffic and as such we’re able to negotiate very considerable discounting. We pass this on to our clients.

Q: Are many people using hosted services right now?

Paul: Virtually everyone is using some form of hosted service already. If you use a mobile phone you’re actually using a hosted service, because a lot of intelligence that runs on that phone is actually held at a central office location, so if you’re with O2 or Vodafone they have systems that host your voicemail, they have IVR and you’re mobile is just an access device. Typically the cost of the technology is supplemented by the contract you are on.  So, you may have bought your phone for a few pounds when in fact the retail price of that phone may be hundreds of pounds and you are now paying for that technology over a period of time, based on a contract with the spend value per month which goes to that provider.  So everyone is actually using hosting in some fashion or another.

Regarding market share, I estimate that 1% of the UK market would recognise themselves as hosting some sort of the telecoms service today. In North America it is much more. An example is that mail order companies can ship products with a service number attached to it, so if it arrives damaged there is a phone number on there that people can ring which will take you through to someone that can help you  – in America  96% have this, in the UK it is more like 20%.

Q: What would you ask your hosting company?

Paul: The first thing to know is where have they co-located their equipment. You need a high capacity/high available environment with a lot of resilient architecture.  What that means is that you want a co-location that has got environmental controls, is a manned facility with an engineer on site to deal with problems 24/7.

Thanks Paul.

*TDM Time Division Multiplexing is a method where lots of signals are combined for transmission on a single communications channel or line. Each signal is broken up into lots of segments, each having short duration.

A popular trend taking hold of many different companies is the practice of call center outsourcing. There are numerous well known businesses that use outsourcing for their call centers for various reasons. Although the term may be used often when referring to company customer service, many still do not know what the act actually consists of.

Let’s take a look at the word outsourcing. In basically refers to the act of sourcing your work to others outside of your company. In the larger scheme of things, it can also serve as a reference to the subcontracting to another. This could include giving another business or firm, a specific set of duties or purpose that will help with the workload of another company. Sometimes, a group of individuals are given a crack at the responsibilities. These tasks are often completed at another location, which is not positioned within the head company.

When call center outsourcing occurs, companies use this practice to save money on the way they provide customer service to their clients. It is a business strategy that has efficiently boosted not only cost saving measures, but also the productivity of consumer call center support. An advantage to outsourcing call center business is that it allows a company to provide assistance based on the specific needs of a client. This is good for the client. Now for the company, call center outsourcing helps them to decrease operating costs by hiring workers that can be retained for a significantly lower cost. These new members of the staff are trained and situated at an offsite location to handle the calls. This also allows a company to focus on their onsite operations without using space for their call center support services.

A shifting of jobs and they way things are handled within the company have been known to occur in regards to call center outsourcing. The way that this area of business is handled differs from the way the telemarketing or software testing areas of a company is ran. Some employees have voiced concerns about their place of employment turning to call center outsourcing. They fear that this will interfere with the jobs they are responsible for. In actuality, some dislocation will occur, but there are a very low amount of professional positions that have been lost when a company turns to call center outsourcing.

One of the most appealing features to working with a call center outsourcing approach to business is the cutting of costs that is enjoyed. These call centers are able to handle the high volume of calls associated with a particular company. Their areas of assistance are not limited to providing only customer support. These call centers also take on technical support issues, as well as handle sales inquiries and marketing assignments. Telemarketing is also an area that outsourced call centers will take care of. There are many other specific business tasks included as well. Examples of call center duties include airline and hotel reservation services, as well as fundraising.

IP Telephony is a rapidly emerging technology for voice communication that uses the ubiquity of IP-based networks to deploy IP Technology enabled devices in enterprise and home environments. IP Technology enabled devices, such as desktop and mobile IP phones and gateways, decrease the cost of voice and data communication, enhance existing features, and add compelling new telephony features and services.

The challenges in front of IP telephony is the delivery of voice, fax, or video packets in a dependable flow to the user, at a level comparable to that of the PSTN. Much of IP telephony focuses on that challenge.

IP telephony can be used in bigger companies to deploy powerful, integrated voice, video and data applications delivering:

- Low cost videoconferencing
- True integration of databases and legacy systems
- Multi-channel call centers
- Unified messaging
- Real time collaboration
Systems vendors and service providers plan to use IP Telephony to create unified communications systems that integrate voice calls, voice mail, E-mail, instant messaging, and conferencing.

IP Telephony makes it easier to retrieve a voice message from a PC or have E-mail read over a phone. Such apps exist now, but they’ll become more integrated and easier to use over the next couple of years.

Telecom software development is wrought with challenges. Applications must work with cell phones, PDAs, office phones, PBXs, and call centers and operate across a range of wired and wireless networks from different service providers. They also need to scale to millions of users. While those challenges won’t go away, IP Telephony can make it easier to tackle them.

Another goal is to voice-enable more applications so users can access features, find information, and route messages using simple voice commands. The ease of rerouting Ip Telephony calls makes it easier to provision remote workers, letting them answer calls from home and appear as if they’re in a call center.

IP Telephony adoption remains slow despite growing provider and customer interest. And while applications will no doubt enhance the technology’s appeal, for now IP Telephone price-tag remains its biggest selling point.

As more and more people conduct their business or some part of their work from home, low cost IP Telephony is perfect for them. There IP Telephony applications must be geared to target not just the bigger companies but also individual home users who can benefit from the use of advanced IP Telephony.

For more information voip, please visit VoIP Architecture.

Indeed, the call centre revolution has come full circle, years after British firms outsourced jobs to India. The tide has turned, with the announcement that one of the subcontinent’s biggest outsourcing firm is planning to develop two call centres in Northern Ireland. ICICI OneSource, a back-office services specialist, plans to strengthen its British operations, in one of the most significant attempts by an off-shore outsourcer to take on UK-based rivals on their own turf.

ICICI OneSource, with an 8,000 staff count in Bombay and Bangalore aims to create 1,000-jobs in Northern Ireland over the next 2-years, with the opening of two of its outsourcing centres. And, its new offices will largely be responsible for handling call centre work on behalf of British and European clients, who do not want to shift such functions to the sub-continent. The firm’s British clients are mainly drawn from the financial and telecommunications industries.

According to a report in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, Britain’s first Indian-owned call centre opened in Belfast yesterday, in a complete reversal of the controversial off-shoring / outsourcing trend, when British firms opened call centres in the sub-continent to take advantage of its low cost labour. Further, the first batch of ICICI OneSource’s 60-Irish employees began a 7-week training course in Belfast under the professional guidance of Indian call centre experts, who will be putting them through their paces for the duration of the course.

Once the news gets out and about, the idea of Indians training British call centre employees is bound to raise more than a few eyebrows. It was not so long ago, these very same customers complained of the frustrating waits and the enormous difficulty faced in understanding accents, when dealing with companies that relied on foreign (read Indian) call centres.

It was mainly this customer dis-satisfaction that caused several big firms to pull out of India, not because they were unhappy with the services provided, but because they feared a fearsome backlash, a withdrawal of customer business, anger that British jobs had been sent overseas.

Matthew Vallance, ICICI OneSource’s Managing Director in Europe saying the launch was part of ICICI’s plans to create a global network of outsourcing locations, stated: “Technically it would be possible (to do all call-centre work in India), but some of our clients want some parts of their work handled close to home,” and added: “This is not about moving work from India to the UK; it is about the growth and expansion of our business. People are very familiar with the Irish accent, and we think it will work very well.”

Although, most of the large off-shore service providers from India have sales offices in the UK, most back-office work is carried out off-shore. ICICI OneSource’s first operation in the UK, it is also the first time an Indian outsourcer has developed such an off-shore call centre itself.

A smart move by the Indians, a move that is bound to ensure the off-shoring / outsourcing crown remains with them. Having learnt their lesson well, “If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain!”, they have proceeded to go to the mountain. As other low cost competitors crop up, India service providers knowing they must do one better, have begun to expand and branch out by setting up call centres overseas, ensuring that when the phone is picked up, there will be fewer complaints about accents, as they will be one of their own! Called good business sense, the Indians have plenty of it. As can be seen from the fact that money earned from outsourced operations is now being spent to generate much more.

And now, there should be no complaints about jobs fleeing to India. It may well be the other way round, as Indians begin to complain about their jobs being sent out West!

To know more about this visit: outsourcing

Voice Self Service (VSS) start to play important roll in improving contact centre performance and its acceptance by users is rising. The benefits of VSS, if implemented well, are enormous. VSS is unlike any other technology deployed in the call center, its special attention to ensure that they’re usable and perform well.

There are several key benefits of using VSS : - Hands free - More natural than touchtone - Simplify complex menus - Shortens call times - Increase in call competition - Increases customer satisfaction

How to make it right?

· Performance : Caller satisfaction depends very strongly on the response time experienced; avoid reuse of existing web content and architecture to deliver trough IVR. Performance and load testing are very important.

· VUI vs. GUI : VUI (Voice User Interface) and Graphical User Interface) are different, and GUI should not be imitated in VSS. In web application the presentation layer include text, images and sounds and along with the navigation all the information remain visible to the customer. In voice application the customer navigates with his voice and he needs to memorize the oral information delivered to him. This requires a lot of care in designing the speech application.

· Expectations : expectations from speech applications are often very high. Great demo at the start should be accompanied with explanations of the potential difficulties in running such application at first stages.

· Tuning : Most speech applications require extensive tuning, which can increase rates of transaction completion significantly. Tuning uses the experiences and data from real calls to adjust call flow, prompts, speech grammars, thresholds, and other parameters. It can be very expensive, and may need to be repeated as the application or the callers’ behavior evolves.

In spite of the difficulties VSS bring big benefits. The key is to be aware of potential issues and be preparing for them. With the right training, processes, and tools, speech self-service projects can be smooth and successful. Deploying speech self-service technology fit well to most call centers’ today, it is not a question of if but when you will start the implementation. View more info on CYTAL Business Systems

About The Author

Managing Director of CYTAL Business Systems BVBA, a Belgium company engages in delivering tools to improve call centre performance. David is engage in the call centre and Telco industries for more then 20 years. Prior to establish CYTAL David served as VP of customer care at YES (digital TV operator) after successfully accomplish different senior positions at Motorola.