Today in some companies contact centers tend to operate as standalone operations, separate from the rest of the enterprise. Expertise within the enterprise and within its suppliers and partners, typically are not available as a resource to help with customer interactions. The costs for contact centers to replicate knowledge already in the enterprise and its eco-system too often strain already limited resources. The skills-based routing paradigm of transferring calls in search of expertise can result in long waits, dropped connections, and customer frustration at having to recap information from agent to agent. SIP presence facilitates a more efficient and collaborative communication model that will help merge not only enterprise communications with contact center practices, but will also integrate the enterprise eco-system. Through a standard mechanism for communicating presence, contact center resources across enterprises can be linked. Let's take a look at an example. A customer planning a trip overseas calls her credit card company with a complex question on monetary conversion rate policies. The call center agent checks her "finance expert" presence tab and sees that internal resident experts are off the phone and available for consultation. The agent clicks the IM tab and is automatically routed to one of the available experts for an Instant Messaging session. The agent then gets and quickly relays the expert's answer to the customer's question. Surprised at the quick response, the customer then asks a question regarding a disputed transaction with a merchant. The call center agent brings up the merchant information, which displays the presence and availability of the merchant's call center agents for phone calls or IM, and quickly identifies an available agent who can look up details of the transaction and send it back via a web-page push over a SIP session. The customer, provided with this information, now remembers not only the transaction, but also leaves with a lasting impression of the responsiveness and expertise of the credit card company. By making it easy to reach the right expert resource in real-time, agents can resolve calls faster and more often on the first contact. Through SIP, the original customer phone call and IM session with the both experts can be tracked together and archived through the call center reporting system. An open, internet-centric standard for communication, SIP will fundamentally change the reach of the contact center call routing decision. In effect, everyone within the enterprise and its eco-system of partners and suppliers can become a contact center resource. The contact center no longer has to rely solely on dedicated agents. It no longer is an isolated business function, but an essential part of a business process that involves and leverages all resources to improve the customer experience. | 
