Imagine checking in at an airline counter and the agent tells you that you're prohibited from taking your bags, your wallet or any form of identification with you on the flight. All of those items must be checked at the counter and they will fly separately.
Your puzzled look prompts the agent to reassure you: "Don't worry, your items will be waiting for you at your destination." So you grudgingly leave it all behind - and hope that your valuables get there and that you can find them when you get there. The good news is that sometimes your belongings do make it. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't.
Of course, nobody likes this scenario. But for some reason you tolerate it, the airline tolerates it, and the business model continues. This airline has a name: CTI Air.
Now, none of us would fly on that airline, right? But the fact is we deal with this model every time we call a contact center.
Think about it. When our phone call reaches a contact center we can't take our ID with us. All of our information, history, button pushes, and even phone numbers, travel separately from us.
If we're lucky, we get to an agent and our information arrives with us, but most of the time we end up having to provide our information again and again.
Amazingly, contact centers have to build out separate, expensive parallel networks to transport all of this computer telephony integration (CTI) information and, just like the imaginary airline, it's tolerated.
But now everyone knows there's a better way. It's called SIP.
With SIP, all of your information goes with you; it just gets packed in the header and comes along for the ride. The same goes for all of your history, social network interaction and location data.
SIP makes the contact center experience much cheaper and more efficient for your business and remarkably smoother for your customers.
So, end the parallel network and stop flying CTI Air.
Instead, travel the contact center terrain with SIP.
Posted 23 Oct 2009 at 01:53 PM
Comments
Interesting article Ajay. And yes, SIP removes the value proposition that proprietary CTI provides. My only differing thought is that SIP alone does not mean an understanding of call center business rules, desktop integrations, reporting solutions, or other APPLICATIONS that call centers need and rely on to differentiate their customer service.
Posted 23 Oct 2009 at 02:37 PMActually SIP together with traditional CTI will make an interesting scenario. I am working on something similar and will share soon.
Posted 22 Nov 2009 at 03:57 AMhttp://www.VikasGoyal.net
Good observation and I liked the analogy. But today's CTI has one power, Caller ID and access to DATABASE. If the CTI software makes use of these two, the information does not have to travel, but simply be retrieved when required.
Posted 2 Dec 2009 at 11:56 AM