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Artificial Intelligence, The Terminator, Post-Humanism, Bionic Limbs, Singularity…As the power of technology continues to surpass human ability in new and rapid ways, our fascination and often fear of machines ask us to question the boundaries of human interaction and the artificial. While predictions and theory vary and even contradict one another, there seems to be a consensus on a need for balance. We see this need often today; whether it is a customer caught in a calling queue or a caller sent to a desktop voicemail over a live mobile human. When it comes to a business’s call center offering, the quest for balance takes front-line.
Service providers must answer the call for an innovative solution to the growing struggle between human response and mechanical communication. As an integral piece of any business’s customer service offering, we believe the move toward hosted call centers offers the flexibility, functionality and visibility required to move end-customers quickly to a live voice without wasting time or resources. Today, service providers leverage hosted communication services to boost human communication through productivity features and on-going application integration, all while minimizing human and environmental risk with automatic maintenance and business continuity.
More and more, we see the end-customer seeking an intuitive call center solution that allows optimal, live customer service while taking advantage of hosted unified communication technology. Micah Solomon, entrepreneur and customer systems innovator, writes for Fast Company on the growing need for live support as organizations place more services in the hands of technology:
Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it’s easy to shortchange them emotionally…This lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection.
Following such demand, BroadSoft’s own BroadWorks® Call Center application recently released new enhancements allowing service providers the scalability to extend their hosted call center offering into enterprises with higher call volumes and more complex reporting requirements. Taking full advantage of the benefits of a hosted solution, such as low-upfront cost and scalability, the BroadWorks® Call Center application opens new revenue streams from premise-based platforms.
To explore the benefits of hosted call center solutions, read on http://bit.ly/broadsoftcallcenter or request a sales representative contact you.
One of the key trends that’s driving “Unified Communications as a Service” (or ‘Hosted UC’) is that as power and productivity and capability increase, it simply makes more sense to host this functionality “in the cloud.”
Or, to put another way: if all you need is voice, then there’s really not much difference between premises-based solutions or hosted solutions; but once you need a blended service that includes voice, video, mobility, Microsoft or IBM or Google integration, social networking integration, and application integration…well, that’s going to exceed the capabilities of all but the largest of IT organizations.
And these rich UC solutions require rich infrastructure. In the same way that Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” describes a model where fundamental needs must be met before higher value goals can be achieved, Hosted UC has always been dependent on access networks that deliver fundamental levels of bandwidth, security, and control. If you build it, they will come.
As you may have heard, there’s a router war going on right now. Alcatel-Lucent has muscled into the router business, dominated by Cisco and Juniper. Last week they made an announcement about a new 100 gigabit Ethernet edge router, which the company claims will be the first on the market when it is available next year.
Here’s InformationWeek and Telephony coverage of the announcement.
The “edge” is an important distinction. Traditionally the fastest routers have resided in the core of service provider networks, where massive amounts of data are managed. Alcatel Lucent wants to get into the core as well, as explained by Dow Jones:
Over the past five years, Alcatel went from a new entrant to the third-largest player in the $4.5 billion market for edge routers, which manage Internet traffic at the point in the network that’s closest to the user. The business, which falls under its IP division, accounted for 8% of the company’s total revenue in the first quarter.
On Thursday, Alcatel announced a 100 gigabit ethernet edge router, which the company claims is 10 to 100 times faster than anything currently out there. Because of the large capacity, the company hopes the product can breach the more demanding market for core routers, which sit closer to the service provider’s central facility. The market, worth about $2.4 billion, is dominated by Cisco and Juniper but is a potential new source of more profitable revenue.
Call it the race to 100 GbE, call it the router showdown – those stories are easy to write. But they under-report the important trend driving this intense competition – exploding amounts of consumer and enterprise traffic, driven by advanced services and 2.0 applications. This is the underlying issue all these manufacturers, and their carrier customers, are scrambling to prepare for.
At BroadSoft, we don’t have a dog in this router fight. We provide the DNA and applications that are creating a surge in network traffic. Through our partnership with Microsoft, we power unified communications (UC) that unites the desktop with the mobile device for distributed workforces. Moving to an all-IP solution also helps make innovative services like collaboration, video, disaster recovery, and application integration much easier to deploy.
As networks migrate to full IP from traditional TDM, these advanced services will produce the kind of traffic only seen at the core of networks a decade ago. This traffic will require the huge new pipes the big three are introducing, and explains the fight to own a big slice of a multi-billion dollar market.
So here’s to more router competition – as long as it gets the network “on ramps” in place for the data explosion coming down the road.
Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are reeling from the current economic recession. And these businesses are the backbone of our economy. There are nearly 4.5M SMBs with between 1 to 19 employees – as reported by the latest U.S. census data – and they are all seeking ways to control costs and ride out the current storm.
In the now famous words of President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” To translate that into this context, the current conditions provide SMBs an opportunity to replace antiquated telephony systems with unified communications (UC).
UC is the convergence of telecom and desktop applications and is being driven by the growing adoption of VoIP. According to the International Engineering Consortium, UC describes all forms of call and multimedia message-management functions controlled by an individual using a single mailbox for contact and content access. Communications can be from a wide range of devices over both fixed and mobile networks, and people can choose their preferred methods of communicating whether that be voice, IM, SMS, video, etc. UC also incorporates presence, so it allows an individual to indicate availability (e.g., available, on a call, in a meeting).
The bottom line — UC breaks down barriers of communications. People can now communicate to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
While many companies have been leveraging hosted VoIP environments for some time now, it’s interesting to note that a recent study commissioned by Siemens found that SMBs and larger enterprises face the same UC challenges. Take a look at this graph that highlights the productivity costs of the top 10 communication challenges:
The study showed that common communication barriers, such as time lost juggling multiple phone systems, distractions from unwanted calls and email spam, and the hassles of moving in and out of various technologies to coordinate communications can kill productivity. These issues result in 17.5 hours of unproductive knowledge worker time per week, wasting an average of $26,041 per worker per year. The study does not suggest that all that money can be recouped via a UC solution, but on average companies can realize savings of $5,209 per worker for a deployment investment of $225 per worker.
Businesses get incredible productivity benefits and improve the efficiency of how their employees communicate from UC communication features, but deploying an on-premise solution is expensive and challenging. And especially so for SMBs, who can’t afford the remedies and don’t have the in-house telephony expertise. The solution is Hosted UC. Telecommunication service providers are now playing a key role for businesses by hosting UC “in the cloud,” i.e. Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
This approach does not tie companies into proprietary products and will not compromise the demands of their own business. They can focus on their core business versus spending time, money and resources managing complex communications infrastructures.
The short term costs and efforts are minimal compared to the increased efficiency, productivity AND savings that will be realized from moving to a secure, hosted UC environment. And you need to choose a hosted provider with a track record of successful integration to remove the headaches of migrating.
So amidst the day-to-day belt tightening, don’t miss the opportunity to integrate the handset, the desktop and the mobile device of your employees. You’ll increase productivity, reduce costs and be better prepared for the economic upswing ahead.
Michael Tessler
Scott Hoffpauir
Leslie Ferry
Alex Doyle
Curtis Hartmann
Shirish Andhare
Paul Adams
