For many businesses, especially large enterprises, contact centers are a key contributor to revenue and customer satisfaction. While “omni-channel” (voice, chat, email, social) is how many if not most contact centers operate, calls are the still the most critical element of their communications. Research from market research firm Metrigy confirms this, with 64% of consumers indicating that voice/phone is a vital customer interaction channel, particularly as it relates to customer service inquiries.[i]

Of course, voice is the most mature of the communications channels, going back more than a century. The providers of ACD (call routing) technology do an excellent job of managing the many call transactions a contact center has, with advanced skills-based routing features and great reporting tools for monitoring KPIs. However, outside of the ACD platform, here are a couple of things you might want to consider adding into the mix.

1. Addressing complex routing schemes. At an individual call level, the ACD is the master of routing calls to the correct agent, but what about at a macro level? For instance, what if you have an outsourced center that only takes overflow traffic, or a follow the sun model where calls need to be moved as one center goes offline and another becomes available? Here’s where you need a routing engine that sits above the ACD and makes those kinds of big picture decisions.
    
   At Ribbon, we’re very proud of our knowledge and expertise in intelligent call routing and session control. Our policy and routing solution (PSX) enables the kinds of complex routing schemes described above and many more, such as business continuity scenarios where instantaneous failover decisions need to be made. Architecturally, we make it possible to efficiently and effectively manage multiple services from a single point, regardless of network size or geography. We offer a centralized provisioning layer for the whole network and a distributed call processing layer, both of which can be deployed in redundant configurations for reliability. To learn more, check out the Intelligent Session Control for the Enterprise whitepaper (no registration required).


2. Security analytics. When you want to perform call analytics to look for security issues, specialized products are a must. Threats like Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) - flooding a contact center with a large number of calls to disable operations - are rampant in contact centers. Being subjected to one will cost you revenue, impact your customer experience, and potentially require you to pay a ransom to make it stop! Having the capability to analyze multitudes of call records, look for patterns and identify anomalies, is a critical weapon in the contact center’s arsenal to fight back against bad actors. For instance, Ribbon Analytics uses AI and machine learning to flag security risks and pass enforcement policies to your session border controller(s) in near real time. Learn more here.


3. Operational analytics. Problem identification and resolution is as fundamental a need for IT as there could be. As it relates to the contact center, you need to ensure that you are covering all the bases. You might already have a core toolset in place but be on the lookout for ancillary elements to improve your trouble management capabilities, particularly as it relates to the complexities of the contact center. An application such as Ribbon Analytics’ Most Probable Cause can provide you some benefits and fill in some areas you might be lacking when it comes to root cause analysis.

As with almost everything in technology, nothing is static. One thing we do well is understanding at a fundamental level the issues and problems related to high call volumes – that is how to secure them, how route them and how to use analytics to continually improve service quality.

We have plenty more to say about how we enable other important aspects of contact center operations, such as how we fit with coaching, alignment with PCI compliance and what you can do with features such as SIP Recording (SIPRec), but those will have to wait for the next blog.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact me.

[i] Metrigy, Customer Experience Optimization: 2023 - 24