What is CTI?
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) allows the treatment of a telephone call to be changed depending on external influencers. Convergence between telephony systems and computers is making CTI essential, and it enables such functionality as call recording, conferencing, screen popping, call plans and scripting. The first two features are well-known. Screen popping refers to the functionality that allows the data relevant to an individual caller to be ‘popped’ onto the receiving Contact Centre agent’s screen as the call is answered. Call plans refer to the feature whereby, for example, the first five calls are sent to department A, then the next two calls are queued for a maximum of 30 seconds, then any further calls are overflowed to department B.
As the above brief examples illustrate, CTI is of vital importance to almost all business telephone calls to Contact Centres, and desirable to enhance customer service for many other types of calls to businesses.
CTI Computer Telephony Integration
Introduction
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) is a strategic component of a contact centre: it is used to link the telephony system (ACD, IVR, call recording...) to information held on a CRM database about the caller.
Until the advent of NewVoiceMedia ContactWorld, CTI was a very expensive feature available only to the largest centres - it typically needed an army of systems integrators to get working and to keep it up to date. With ContactWorld, the non-technical end-user can do everything themselves within minutes. Existing contact centres can use our CTI solution to pre-process calls before any existing ACD hardware.
ContactWorld Hosted CTI is easily configured to allow:
Changing the ACD routing according to pre-programmed or calculated criteria...
- route 'this caller' to the last agent he/she spoke to
- route this caller to his/her normal agent
- route this caller to the VIP desk, and prioritise in the queue
- execute a specific (caller-defined) IVR, e.g. offer a choice of routing to Sales or Finance, but not Marketing or Support. We refer to this feature as 'Lite Touch IVR'
- this caller had a service problem an hour ago and will should be fast tracked to the service desk
- this caller is in stage 5 of the sales process and should be routed to the first available specialist within the Project X team
- the CEO wants to speak to this caller the next time he/she calls
- automatically start a call recording, this caller is a known troublemaker
Screen popping the agent before the call in put through...
- the usual caller information (name, address, account number...)
- mapping information (via integration with Google Maps)
- who the caller spoke to last time and wrap-up information
- the caller is a high roller, she spent £4472 last month on a family holiday to Destination X, but did not buy our travel insurance. Sell it when the caller is put through.
- results of a questionnaire the caller completed the last time
If the caller is held in a queue to perform certain operations...
- play music tracks that were previously selected by the caller (Rock, Classical, Folk...)
- play an advertisement that is relevant to the caller (PhoneAd) based on spending patterns and the in-house loyalty program. This feature is expanded in the section ''Individual Caller Treatment".
- play cross-sell and up-sell messages against a targeting criterion
"With ContactWorld, CTI is more than a routing and screen-pop exercise, it becomes a new way of enhancing the caller experience, deriving more value for the caller, and treating the caller as an individual."
CTI has so far evolved through three generations, with NewVoiceMedia innovating the fourth.
First generation CTI ran off mainframe servers using proprietary protocols, and was deployed usually as customer premise equipment. Examples include IBM CallPath. Second generation CTI was client/server in architecture, with the mainframe being replaced by a CTI server and a client running off a desktop PC. The solution was still deployed on customer’s premises, and examples included early Genesys solutions. Third generation CTI is similar to second generation, except that the CTI server can instruct the public telephone exchange to take back the call and redeliver it to another destination in the public telephone network. Examples include Genesys, Geotel and Cisco ICM.
Fourth generation CTI is NewVoiceMedia’s innovation (multiple patents are pending) and forms the foundation of ContactWorld. The Application Hub is a single integrated CTI-enabled telephone exchange - it sits outside both the customer premise and the public telephone network, but connects to the PSTN, Mobile networks, Skype, ISPs and VPN, as well as customer servers using open standards like XML and SIP, across the Internet to integrate with customer computers.
The benefits of NewVoiceMedia Dynamic CTI:
- every aspect of the system is CTI controllable (ACD, IVR, call recording set-ups, voiceovers…everything)
- every aspect of the CTI is end-user defined and controlled using a web browser. No programming is required, and the changes can be made by any person you authorise. This person need not be technical.
- there is no need for third party system integrators
the end-user can visualise the resulting CTI as an easily understood flow chart - changes to the CTI are logged and full audit trails define who did what, and when
- end-user changes to the CTI will be implemented by the next incoming call
- there is an open integration of the data held by a client’s CRM system, both for read and write operations (using our ContactWorld ContactManager tool)
- calls are subject to CTI before, during and after the call
screen pops can include web 2.0 multi-window look-ups
It means that you could, say, add new agents in minutes to upscale your capacity in response to real-time increases in load following an advertising campaign; you could change the call routing of an important client to an agent who will be working from home that afternoon, you could add four new voiceover messages in the morning to respond to a media announcement… It means the flexibility to respond to changes in your business in minutes - without the assistance of expensive third parties.
In what is also believed to be unique in our market, ContactWorld’s Dynamic CTI is available at all times during the call: it can be set-up to route pre-defined callers to specialised agents; it could allow the caller to break-out of the queue at any time to leave a call recording or answer a marketing survey and be returned to a higher point in the queue; and during wrap-up the agent can quickly define CTI actions to take the next time that caller makes contact.
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