Where Is "Unified Communications" Really Going?

Unified Communications – Then and Now

January 24, 2012 // Ed LaBanca

An interview with Art Rosenberg of the Unified-View

by Ed LaBanca

Art Rosenberg

After seeing numerous posts about Unified Communications (UC) in the media and business / social networks where professionals were addressing UC or trying to describe what it is, I decided to give Art Rosenberg a call. This article includes his initial reply and follow-on interview questions and answers.

Art: I’m not surprised by the confusion that “unified communications” is causing, since there are several perspectives that drive the concept. I have started to use the term “UC-enabled” to describe all applications and infrastructure elements that interact with a person, especially when they are mobile and using multi-modal devices. UC is not a product or even a single service, but a means towards device, network, and application interoperability in communicating with anyone, anywhere, any time, any way.

So, legacy communication technologies can be extended to become “UC-enabled” and the traditional technology specialists and VARs can also extend their expertise to help plan and implement UC-enabled applications.

Such implementations can include traditional on-premise products and/or hosted, cloud-based services.

“I have started to use the term ‘UC-enabled’ to describe all applications and infrastructure elements that interact with a person, especially when they are mobile and using multi-modal devices.”

Art Rosenberg

Ed: It is broadly understood that you originally came up with the term Unified Communication (UC) in the context of your company, The Unified-View, over a decade ago. The term has been embraced by virtually all vendors and professionals within the telecommunications industry and user communities. Could you provide some insight as to your understanding of UC when you first came up with the term?

Art: I originally got involved with business communications by pioneering voice messaging (voice mail) for traditional hosted telephone answering services. Telephone answering, handled by integrated business voicemail systems, enabled failed incoming telephone calls to automatically transfer the caller to record a voice message for the recipient’s voice mailbox (like a giant answering machine). Although company voicemail systems also allowed internal users to directly record, deposit and retrieve voice mail messages for their internal users, outside callers had to make the call connection attempt first to create a voice message.

“UC is not a product or even a single service, but a means towards device, network, and application interoperability in communicating with anyone, anywhere, any time, any way…”

Art Rosenberg

Voice mail technology expanded to “unified messaging” (UM), which enabled voicemail systems to interoperate with email systems for message storage and message management. However, the user interfaces for email and voicemail remained basically the same. Since voicemail systems did integrate with the telephone system, they allowed phone calls to become voice messages and voice messages to be responded to with an outbound call (“Call Return”). I wanted all types of messages to have that kind of flexibility.

So, back around 2000, I expanded “UM” to “unified communications” (UC) to be able to include asynchronous messaging, but also real time responses to a message. I also wanted to include all forms of messaging contact initiation (including fax) to a person (by a person or automated application), as well as all forms of reception/response by the message recipient. That would include “click-to-call/chat” options for responding to a message.

Ed: How did it unfold in ways you expected? How did it unfold in ways you didn’t expect?

Art: The big obstacle for UC implementation was getting proprietary hardware-based telephony to move into the world of software. IP Telephony or VoIP was the initial step forward in doing that, but was focused on reducing technology costs. What is finally starting to happen is the emphasis on business process performance that can be improved through more efficient and flexible means of contact and response with individual end users. The market is still in the process of gracefully migrating from TDM telephony to IP telephony, so there is still a need for supporting that shift through gateways and SIP trunking replacements. But the real benefit to business operations will come from UC-enabled applications that will benefit both individual end-user and business process productivity.

UC started to take hold in business organizations for internal users only. However, there was no real incentive for desktop users (information workers) to want the flexibility of UC. At first, desktop “softphones” looked liked the way to go, but the real driver for UC adoption was mobility and the adoption of multimodal “smartphones” (now tablets too). This brought person-to-person contacts together with automated business process “notifications” and interactive “mobile apps” for Internet information access and delivery. I had always suggested that mobile users would be the chief beneficiaries of UC-enabled applications of all kinds. So, when Apple announced its first iPhone, I wrote that the “UC Phone” had arrived, and with the iPhone 4S and Siri voice assistant, that UC vision is “getting meat on its bones.”

One big surprise has been the revolution in social networking services, which basically uses short text messaging to communicate and post personal status and opinion information on the Web for others to see and respond to. It is not really just “person-to-person” messaging but, because it is quickly and easily posted, it ties in well with UC’s big driver, mobile devices that enable originators to post and interested recipients to be quickly notified and respond to whatever the subject is. End users are rapidly exploiting this form of contact and information exchange for business contacts, which also lends itself to further UC flexibility in switching to other forms of communication (“click-to-contact”) and federated presence information on availability for ad hoc calls and conferencing.

Although the concept was not new, the shift to IP connectivity opened the door to putting people connectivity and information into the “cloud.” This trend is rapidly being adopted by both small and large businesses as they migrate from their legacy premise-based technologies. In effect, mobility and UC enablement of all types of software applications will best be served by being “virtual” and in public or private clouds. Security and privacy issues, of course, must be handled properly, but physical location of servers should not affect manageability.

Voice mail systems remained tied to proprietary Touch-Tone telephone systems and their Telephone User Interfaces (TUI) and independent companies like Octel and more lately, AVST, specialized in integrating their voice mail system offerings to many popular telephone systems. This was particularly useful for distributed branch locations where different telephone systems were in place. They also tied in TUI-based IVR applications as a logical self-service offering. However, the combination of UC flexibility, mobile devices, and accurate speech recognition technology, will change the role of IVR to combine optional visual screen output along and voice/finger input (IVVR). This will bring the personalized mobile smartphone into the domain of the PC.

Ed: How do you view UC now? Are there any differences such as context in today’s architectures and people’s perception?

Art: One big thing that is slowly changing is how blind, ad hoc real-time contacts (telephone calls) will be displaced by “contextual intelligence.” That is, a real-time contact will be initiated within the context of the caller’s purpose for making a call and also with “availability” (presence information) about the person to be contacted. The caller no longer will have to know location-based phone numbers, nor will they have to make a phone call just to end up in “voicemail jail.”

Instead, callers will start using contact center technology for getting to the right person associated with the context of the issue they need to discuss. However, with CEBP (Communication Enabled Business Process) applications, they can start with either the information issue or the specific person (directory) to contact before a call connection is attempted. Obviously, if there is no urgent need for an immediate connection, any form of messaging will do. I see this approach being taken for contacts from any type of end user.

Call center technology exploited the use of both voice and text messaging with customers, but was not hugely successful because most consumers used telephones, not computers, and agents could not efficiently switch modes of interaction dynamically. However, the call center was the model for the “contact center,” which was supposed to exploit inbound and outbound messaging tied to “availability” (presence) of qualified agents or experts.

To the extent that consumers are rapidly becoming more mobile and multi-modal, and that staff personnel are working remotely or are mobile, the future of the UC-enabled contact center (“UC Contact Center”) will expand to cover everyone in an organization in different ways (e.g., the “Help Desk, “Nurse Call,”etc.). Even more change will come from the universal growth of public social networking capabilities to people and information.

Ed: Can you help clarify what UC is today in your view looking at it from various perspectives:

- Users?

Art: End users don’t know what “UC” is or really care. All they see is the multi-modal user interface (UI) for a variety of computer-based applications, which has to be simple, non-error-prone, and fast. They don’t need to know if the application is in their device or in the “cloud.” Unfortunately there is no good name for consumers to describe UC flexibility, but they know what it lets them do when they use their smartphones for initiating or responding to different types of contacts. “Mobile Apps” that exploit smartphone flexibility is probably the closest label that consumers will recognize. So, they will want to be able to use “mobile apps!”

- Enterprise executives?

Art: There are several different levels of executives, but the ones that are responsible for business operational performance are the number one target for exploiting the benefits of UC-enabled business processes. They are the ones that need to identify the existing business processes that can be improved with specific UC-enabled applications. They also have to identify “who” will be the end users involved in the business process, whether they are inside the organization or not. Finally, they are the ones who can help prioritize UC implementation planning.

IT management can contribute to the above by evaluating the different implementation alternatives, providing tools to evaluate the performance of business processes (current and future), and for recommendations for choosing technology providers.

- Vendors / Value-added Resellers?

Art: The vendors have to realize they can’t “lock” in UC-enabled applications the way the old telephony did. End users, both inside and outside the organization will be using mobile smartphones of their choice (BYOD) and will choosing different modalities of contact and information access, depending on their situational circumstances. So, they all have to be “open” when it comes to interoperability of their software and network connectivity.

The situation with Value-added Resellers (VARs) is also going change because of the shift to application-based software that has to flexibly accommodate different mobile User Interface needs. They have to change their business model from big hardware purchase commissions to ongoing service subscription revenues. They also have to be able to work together with application specialists in various vertical markets as part of a team that will include independent consultants and different software/hardware vendors. Finally, they need to provide the analytic tools and metrics for evaluating application performance and trialing new customized self-service apps.

Since “VARs” will be shifting to selling and supporting hosted services for a variety of UC-enabled applications, I have labeled them as “UC VARs.”

- Consultants?

Art: Consultants will continue to play a strong role, especially with larger organizations that may need a strategic plan for migrating to UC-enabled applications. They will need to be able to identify the mission-critical business processes and associated communication problems that require UC-enabled applications to be customized. They will help select appropriate “UC VARs” that can fulfill a client organization’s UC migration needs.

However, big technology providers like Avaya and IBM have already started using their strength in the marketplace to offer consultative services for evaluating and managing business process requirements for UC-enabled applications.

- The media?

Art: The media is slowly getting to understand how UC-enabled applications are replacing the old siloed communication products and services. They have tried to come with new labels to describe what “UC” is all about, including lumping “collaboration” as part of UC. I simply call such functionality as “UC-enabled Collaboration.” The basic business processes for collaboration include meetings and multimedia conferencing, which have a number of associated applications to support them, e.g., planning, notifications, distribution of relevant information, etc.

The media still focuses heavily on ad hoc, real-time person-to-person contacts and is slowly understanding how automated business process applications can also exploit Mobile UC via outbound notifications and responses.

Ed: What are your thoughts on enterprise adaption?

Art: It is going to be slow because it requires a lot of change and a lot of preparation by user organizations that just don’t have the experience or financial resources to move forward very quickly. In addition, the technology providers aren’t finished yet with their product or service offerings. It is also going slowly because it is not clear who is in charge of migrating to UC-enabled applications, business managers or IT. So, it will be a slow evolution.

I believe that accommodating the newer modalities of communication, e.g., Mobile UC and Social Networking, coupled with expanded contact center operations, should be the first targets for UC-enabled applications. This will be particularly important for UC-enabled self-service applications to replace legacy IVR applications, as well as for automated proactive, outbound notifications (CEBP).

Smaller organizations will be able to move more quickly by going for hosted, “cloud” services. The larger organizations will be more cautious because of their existing technology investments, their IT staff responsibilities, and security/privacy concerns. However, larger organizations will start to use “cloud” solutions (public or private) as a starting point for the new modalities of UC-enabled applications, particularly for social networking.

Ed: How do you see UC in today’s context going forward?

Art: The emphasis must be on the “UC-enabled” applications, not just “UC, ”i.e., automated business process applications and communication applications. These applications can all be independent software applications, but now must be multi-modal, “open,” and inter-operable to support UC flexibility. Access to each type of application should be simple, flexible, and fast, and the user interfaces have to be multi-modal to accommodate user choice with mobile, multimodal smartphones and tablets. Analytic tools must be also available to track all application activity from a usage and performance perspective, which will vary by type of user involved (customer, agent, expert, field sales, field support, business partner, etc.).

Analytics will play an even more important role in evaluating communications content (what end users do and say) that will be accessible from “public” and “private” social networking activities not protected by privacy features. Such analytic information will be necessary on an ongoing basis in order to manage the dynamic activity changes that will constantly take place at both the business process level and the communication level.

For more information related to this article or regarding UC vendor solutions contact: elabanca@collabtel.com. Your comments, questions and ideas are welcome. CollabTel (formerly CollabGen) provides consulting services for vendors / VAR’s, and end-user enterprises (www.CollabTel.com). Analyst reports are available via www.CXOReports.com.

IBM's "Social Business" Needs To Be "UC-enabled"

Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.

It’s all about branding new business communications technology in order to associate new products and, more importantly, new services in the marketplace. The trick is in the definitions of the brand and catching the interest of who in a business organization will be interested and responsible for new business communications capabilities. This is particularly tricky as both business processes and communications with people converge as software that all can exploit the Web as services.

The biggest target used to be telephony for real-time person-to-person contacts, but as more consumers started using screen-based endpoint devices, text messaging communications (email, IM, and mobile SMS) have rapidly become a practical alternative to real-time voice interfaces and connections. This shift was accelerated with the advent of multi-modal smartphones and tablets that not only make individual end users more accessible for both business and personal contacts, but also support “UC-enabled” applications to exploit voice or visual user interfaces.

Since Microsoft came in to the UC game at the desktop and mobile smartphones with its Lync software products, IBM has now jumped into the marketplace with a new brand, “Social Business,” that is intended to include US-enabled applications of all kinds. At their recent Lotusphere conference, IBM upgraded their older enterprise technologies to be part of their “Smart Cloud” and “Social Business” product and service offerings. In particular, they reinforced their role in consultative services to organizations that need help in identifying requirements and managing the migration to what I call “UC-enabled” applications.

One analyst who attended the Lotusphere conference was very impressed with the new directions of IBM, but never mentioned “UC” as part of his review (Bruce Guptill, Saugatuck research Alert). On the other hand, Irwin Lazar, from Nemertes, highlighted the need for “UC Management” in his No Jitter review of the Lotusphere conference. (See http://www.nojitter.com/post/232400454/inside-lotusphere)

“UC” is not going away but is being embedded under new labels for business communications. As mobile computer applications proliferate, they need the flexibility of UC for interoperability and, perhaps more importantly, the end user "experience" for multimedia User Interfaces. As far as I am concerned, “Social Business” is really another form of communications that has to become “UC-enabled!”

Apple Will Make Smartphones Even Smarter

Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
December 31, 2011

By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

For my last post of the year, I want to highlight something else that Apple is bringing to the Mobile UC table. They have been notably successful in innovating the design of mobile devices (iPhone, iPad) and it looks like they are converging the user interface modalities even further with their latest patent announcement of the “Smart Bezel” and its Multi-Modal Human Interface (MMHI) Engine.

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/12/apples-revolutionary-smart-bezel-project-gains-a-new-chapter.html

As long as I have been writing about the multi-modal benefits of UC for mobile end users, I have been suggesting that contact initiators should be able to dynamically choose their modality of communication independently of what their recipients may want. That will be particularly valuable for all forms of messaging, where both message input and output (retrieval) could be voice or visual. It will also be very useful for “mobile apps” where input commands can exploit the convenience of voice, while output responses (menu choices, information, graphics, etc.) can exploit the screen. Such flexibility is what UC is all about from the practical end user perspective because it makes the mobile user not only more accessible but also more efficient/productive in using their time.

What is particularly interesting about the Apple approach is that it will simplify and dynamically automate any changes in user interface options based upon the individual end user’s environmental situation. This would be particularly important for dark vs. bright lighting conditions as they impact the use of the screen and its battery needs, as opposed to using speech or haptic input/output as much as possible.

We have always suggested that a person driving a car will require “hands-free” input and “eyes-free” output to insure safe driving. (We can always debate the issue of distractions of any kind for safe driving!) Apple’s Multi-Modal Human Interface Engine would be able to detect the fact that the movement of the mobile device indicates it is in a moving vehicle and could automatically invoke limited interface modality choices. Although there will always be an issue of whether the user is actually driving or is a passenger on a car, train, plane or bus, this kind of sensor detection can still initiate some simple form of “confirmation,” whether from the user or from the vehicle itself.

While automated media conversion has long been available after the fact through “visual voicemail” and improved speech recognition technology that converts voice messages to text, Apple’s Smart Bezel may dynamically control all forms of input and output modalities at the endpoint device level where the user interface action is at. So, while we have always looked at UC’s ability to enable end users to utilize any form of communication exchange between people or between mobile business applications, we still require those end users to make most of those choices manually. Now, maybe it can be done more intelligently and automatically by those multi-modal smartphones that are not just “phones” for conversation anymore.

Stay tuned!

"Mobile Apps" Depend on UC

Copyright © 2011 The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

December 27, 2011

2012: Will “Mobile Apps” Drive The “UC Contact Center?”

By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

As the year 2011 ends and mission-critical business communications technology increasingly shift to personalized, multi-modal, and mobile communications, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all the technology announcements and blogs that cover various components of “unified communications” (UC). My perspective of UC was never limited to just “person-to-person” collaborative contacts, but included the greater potential of automated, pro-active “notifications” that efficiently tie mission-critical interactive business processes directly to specific individual end users.

Such time-sensitive business processes can be found in many vertical markets, including health care, financial services, field services, education, and even retail sales. Because multi-modal smartphones and tablets enable greater accessibility and interface flexibility to individual end users, proactive outbound contacts can now be more effectively used than traditional telephony-based call center technologies that generated interruptive voice calls and heavy use of live agents to handle calls.

Flexible UC interoperability and end user choice of interfaces for contact initiation and contact reception/response will be the hallmark of mobile applications that business organizations will increasingly exploit. While “person-to-person” business contacts will still be important and necessary to support real-time “collaboration” activities, interactions with automated business process applications will now extend to all end users who carry smartphones for their personal communications.

First Things First – UC For Individual End Users Will Pay Off For Business Process Performance

When people communicate more efficiently within the context of a business process, they also make those business processes more efficient, not just as individual productivity, but as part of the process or the group of individuals involved with the process. In effect, UC benefits for business (UC-B) expand on the communication efficiencies of UC benefits for individual end users (UC-U).

Because UC encompasses the integration and interoperability of a variety of both person-to-person contacts and business process-to-person applications (CEBP), implementation planning is both complex and difficult. With the rapid consumer adoption of multi-modal smartphones and BYOD by business users, the pressure is now on organizations to implement and support UC for all types of end users both inside and outside of the organization. My colleagues at UC Strategies.com have long been discussing the new complexities and challenges of cost-efficiently migrating organizations from legacy endpoint devices (desktop telephones and PCs) to a virtual, mobile UC environment.

Now that Web portals and mobile devices (handheld smartphones and tablets) are making access to information and people more dynamic and location- independent, UC is becoming both more important and more doable. Before we move old infrastructure technologies to UC-based environments, we better come up with a label for the target result that everyone, including end-users and management (not just IT) can recognize and understand. “UC” alone doesn’t do it!

A recent article on mobility for banking and “context-aware computing” quoted technology provider Openstream on its mobility offerings for the banking industry that enables important notifications to mobile end users/customers to dynamically switch from text to voice messages “based on context, location, orientation, motion and the environment. ….Openstream’s software connects with the technology embedded in new mobile phones, tablets, PCs and laptops to sense the devices location and circumstances. That software then serves as a layer between the computing device and the bank.”

While not mentioning “UC” in their product description, Openstream is obviously exploiting the UC concept of “transmodal” communications for outbound notifications. With the mushrooming growth of “mobile apps,” however, we should start to see more use of UC software infrastructure in various types of business process applications. Time-sensitive information delivery and “notifications” to mobile devices will increase business process performance because of increased accessibility to key people in a process, anywhere, anytime.

Step 2: Let’s Call a Spade a Spade – The “UC Contact Center” Is For ALL Business Contacts

With the consolidation of all forms of contact, the UC Contact Center will subsume traditional telephony real-time incoming call-handling functions, whether direct connections (e.g., mobile extensions, DID) or via live assistance. When a synchronous live connection with a particular person or persons cannot be realized, availability information (presence) and messaging alternatives for the caller can be offered to the caller.

When the traditional call center,” based on real-time telephony interactions between an organization and its customers (consumers) shifted to the “contact center,” to try to include email, FAX, and online applications, nothing significant really changed call handling operationally. This was simply because consumers were still stuck with the physical separation of endpoint devices (namely telephones and personal computers), network connectivity (wired, wireless, internal, public), and the lack of consistent, self-service application user interfaces across all of the above.

With the advent of IP connectivity, those physical barriers are disappearing and, in addition to traditional person-to-person contacts, will particularly affect self-service applications that legacy call centers supported through IVR technologies. The limitations of IVR are primarily the need to use voice for both input and output to legacy telephones. While voice input is very convenient and efficient for the end user, speech output for automated self-services is inefficient and therefore limited to short amounts of simple information.

The output problem can be easily resolved with the selective use of screen outputs to a multimedia smartphone. In addition, mobile users will also need the flexibility to use screen/keyboard inputs when in a public or noisy environment or in a meeting environment where speaking would be disruptive. With speech recognition technology that is now much more efficient and accurate, mobile self-service online applications are now becoming more practical and multimodal, witness Apple’s latest iPhone 4S with its Siri “Personal Assistant.” Self-service applications will be able to flexibly use handheld smartphones for input and output as their circumstances demand. However, it will now be necessary for self-service applications to support different user interfaces for the same application functions.

Note that mobile self-service applications include all applications that end users will need, whether they are internal (staff) or external (partner, customer/consumer) users. As long as they are carrying multi-modal mobile devices, they must now all be supported with “mobile apps” that exploit multi-modal interfaces. In addition, it goes without saying, self-service applications will require UC’s ability to change contact modalities, i.e., “click-to-contact” live assistance.

Bottom Line For UC Planning

Even though there has been greater emphasis placed upon person-to-person business contacts under the label of “collaboration,” self-service applications offer the greatest opportunity for cost-efficient business process improvements. The technology benefits of the “contact center” concept can now be extended to all types of end users, both inside and outside of an organization, as well as to all forms of communication contact.

The “UC Contact Center” provides a practical starting point for UC implementation planning, and by focusing on mobile users with multi-modal smartphones, can provide the path to improved business processes and CEBP through self-service applications and “mobile apps.” This will not only help reduce operational business costs but also increase user satisfaction and productivity in very direct and manageable ways.

Doctors Can't Text?

UC and CEBP Can Provide Fast, Secure Communications For Mobile Service Providers and Consumers

By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

Health care activities have long been recognized as a big target for UC flexibility, particularly for mobile end users and for personalized automated notifications. However, a recent announcement by the health care industry’s Joint Commission showed the potential for another way UC-enabled applications can play a key role for convenient and efficient contacts.

The Joint Commission stated that texting medical orders directly is not acceptable because of authentication and record keeping requirements. Needless to say, the convenience of using mobile smartphones and tablets would be limited. However, while person-to-person texting is prohibited, person-to-process-to-person should be acceptable, and that’s where Mobile UC flexibility and CEBP come into play.

The doctor who wishes to initiate a medical order can simply do so through a mobile app that first requires secure access and authentication, including a written signature or voice ID if necessary. The order can be input as speech or typed, and then becomes a text message that is then deliverable to authorized recipients, which can include hospitals, pharmacies, and the specific patient. The voice recording of an order is also useful for validating a record of the medical order.

The patient involved can be immediately notified and have access to a copy of an order to be aware of what will be done and to quickly follow up with timely usage of any medications involved.

Doesn’t that look like a multi-modal UC application to you?

UC Interoperability For End Users

Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
November 20, 2011

UC Interoperability - Separation of Church, State, And Also End Users

By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

Unified Communications (UC)-enabled applications must be supported in various ways and “interoperability,” a loose label being used to describe a major challenge (See No Jitter post) in supporting UC’s operational growth. For many providers of UC applications and services, interoperability simply means getting old and new communications applications to work together at various levels, including network access, application user interfaces, and endpoint device form factors and operating systems. However, we also have to consider interoperability as a means of gracefully transitioning from the past to the future. This will not only be a challenge in transitioning technologies, but also challenge to the role of an organization in controlling access to both its information resources and its communications between people (internal staff, customers, and business partners).

When it comes to UC applications, we have to consider is who is providing and supporting those applications as well who is controlling their use at the endpoints. That is why we need to look at business communications from the organizations perspective ("church"), the service provider perspective ("state"), and lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the individual end user perspective.

Business communications (particularly voice telephony) are transitioning away from hardware-based, location-based technologies to "open" software and "virtual" applications that can more easily interoperate with each other. They are also shifting to application-driven real-time notifications and multimedia self-services rather than requiring person-to-person phone calls for real-time information access and delivery. Bottom line is that traditional requirements for enterprise communication control is expanding away from just the wired premise desktop to multi-modal, mobile BYOD devices that will be primarily controlled by the individual end users through UC and shared for the many different contacts with other organizations that the individual end user has “business” relations with.

These technology shifts would suggest that much of yesterday's real-time, voice-only desktop telephony requirements will be significantly reduced in favor of multimedia user interfaces, asynchronous forms of personalized contact, and real-time mobile notifications, with the option of "click-to-call/talk/video" connectivity based on accessibility and availability (presence). End users will be initiating voice conversations differently and managing responses to such contacts differently than traditional call management.

So, the basic question really is how will that transition take place from the perspective of enterprise technology? Will it shift (slowly or quickly) completely or partially (hybrid) to virtual cloud based IP network services that can satisfy application customization, management, and security needs? That's where standards and interoperability become key and both the industry (technology providers, service providers) and the markets still have "one foot on land and one foot in the canoe!"

The "UC Contact Center" For All Business Communications

Copyright © 2011 The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

November 13, 2011

Welcome To The New “UC Contact Center”

By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

It is getting very apparent that the current shifting of communications technology to software and mobile, multimodal devices (smartphones, tablets) is also driving business communications towards greater flexibility in initiating and responding to business contacts between people and with automated business process “apps.” Most importantly, with a flexible UC framework, business communications can now selectively accommodate all contact and informational access needs for end users both inside and outside an organization. Such flexibility will have a significant impact on the traditional, telephone-oriented “call center,” enabling its transition to a true, two-way “contact center” between people and business process applications.

Unified communications (UC) has been defined by the experts at UC Strategies as “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.” That definition seems to have held up well to cover both “communications” and “business processes,” but it leaves open the question of how and when UC can best be implemented.

Because voice telephony is moving to more flexible, efficient, and less expensive IP networking, it is now being viewed as part of general UC capabilities. As such, all business telephony technologies have to be rethought in terms of UC flexibility, and one of the most important areas is the good old “call center.” While leading providers of contact center technology are revising their product offerings under various product names, they really are all expanding telephony call center functionality with multimodal UC capabilities.

The Evolution of the “UC Contact Center”

It all started with the telephone and business callers having to leave messages when they couldn’t speak to a person that could deal with their needs. Before answering machines came into play, “message desks” in large organizations wrote out simple pink message slips identifying the caller, while commercial “answering services” collected transcribed messages for subscriber retrieval when they did not answer their phones (busy, ring no answer). Later, Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) technology queued incoming calls for assignment to the next available “agent.”

Such communication services were not restricted to handling incoming calls, but also included outbound dialing to notify the call recipient of an urgent call and, if appropriate, cross-connected the caller to the recipient. In other cases, the answering service included a “dispatch function” to alert a field service person via their wireless pager to call in and retrieve message information from the operator who took the call.

In an attempt to minimize the use of live agents to give callers basic information and handle simple transactions, the call centers started using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technologies to handle incoming calls. However, because of the limitations of the telephone device, caller input was done via the Telephone User Interface (TUI), where all input was made through the Touch-Tone keypad, and all output was done through pre-recorded speech. Needless to say, IVR was useful for only simple applications, and anything complex required the call to be transferred to a queue for a live call center agent.

The “call center” name transitioned to “contact center” many years ago with the growth of the Web and consumer email usage, but one of the real benefits of UC and multimodal smartphones that can now be offered to consumers/customers is to increase easy-to-use self-service applications for information access and transactions. Not only do self-services, if done right, increase user satisfaction with on-demand access and responsiveness, but they also reduce the amount of labor costs to service such customers.

Outbound vs. Inbound Calls

“Call centers” were primarily designed to handle incoming calls from customers who didn’t want to speak to a specific person, just someone who could answer their questions and perform transactions, like make an appointment, change their service information, etc. However, outbound calls were also distributed to call center agents to deliver notifications, reminders, solicit new business, etc. The problem with outbound calls is that there is no guarantee of the accessibility of the person being contacted, so automated outdialing technology was introduced to detect ring/no answer, busy lines, answering machines, etc, before assigning the live call to an agent. If the phone was answered by an answering machine, voice mail, or someone other than the specific person (callee) desired, the calling agent could only leave a message.

With the increasing use of mobile smartphones, not only can a specific person be contacted for a phone connection more easily, but also personalized messages and notifications can be delivered quickly and easily in text or speech to their personal devices. This will be particularly important for time-sensitive notifications such as health care, financial services, and emergency situations.

To add further business benefits from mobile, multimodal smartphones, automated business process applications can initiate such outbound contacts, along with immediate access to self-service functions, without requiring a live agent. With UC capabilities, however, “click-to-contact” options will still allow the customer to access live assistance and expertise contextually from within the notification or self-service application. That minimizes labor costs while still enabling easy and selective access to live assistance for a better customer experience.

The “UC Contact Center” For Internal Users and “Job Contacts”

When you mention the term “contact center,” the old image of dedicated agents handling calls to and from customers is triggered. However, as business users increasingly use mobile smartphones and can benefit from “dual persona” separation of “job contacts” from personal contacts, they too can benefit from timely notifications and on-demand access to live assistance within the organization.

Job contacts can include both traditional “person-to-person” contacts for collaborative activities, as well as contacts through Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP). Again, both person-to-person contacts and timely automated notifications can be efficiently utilized when the recipients are using multimodal smartphones. So, there will be many business process “use cases” that can benefit from the combination of UC and the centralized, multimodal “UC Contact Center.”

Bottom Line For UC Planning

For these reasons, all legacy call centers have to be on the top of the list for UC migration planning. There will be implications for how dedicated contact center “agents” are trained, monitored, evaluated, etc. for maximum job performance in a multimodal, telecommuting environment. Customer interactions will likewise be affected by CRM issues that will change because of dynamic mobile contacts, both inbound and outbound.

Now is also the time to trial self-service applications for both customers and for internal users to insure that the user experience will be most effective when deployed for general use. Such trials can be done more quickly and less expensively by exploiting CaaS (Communications as a Service) offerings, before finalizing procurement and implementation decisions.