Telephony: Telepathy or telephony?

The day when voice and data converge is on its way. Phillip Hunter reports on the role that Internet call centres will play

The possibility of carrying vocal communications over the Internet and company intranet is creeping closer day by day.

The relentless expansion of Internet protocol (IP) continues apace, with itchy-footed IP packets flying around networks as diverse in standard as Ethernet and IBM?s Standard Network Architecture (SNA). Driving this, of course, is the huge and expanding range of applications that offer a cheap way of transmitting different types of traffic.

Every technology needs a so-called killer application to reach a mainstream ?audience? and for voice-over IP, this could be the emerging Internet call centre.

Voice/IP is likely to proliferate as soon as it can deliver more consistent quality over Internet connections, because it will cut tele- communications costs and yield further savings by consolidating all traffic on a single IP network.

With Internet call centres set for tremendous growth as they become easier and cheaper to implement, they could provide an early catalyst for voice/IP.

Some call centres are on the way to becoming Web-enabled, offering another medium for customers to obtain technical support, or for casual browsers to make a sales enquiry. The usual procedure is to click on a button to elicit a phone call from an agent in a call centre which runs alongside the Web site. For this to happen there has to be some link between the Web site and the corresponding call centre ? which is where voice over IP comes in and takes its cue.

According to Ken Reid, field marketing manager at call centre integration specialist Rockwell, many users have just one line for both telephony and Internet access, so if they press a simple call-back button on a Web page, they either have to disconnect immediately, or they get a call back later. ?By which point their initial interest may have gone?, says Reid.

A fundamental principle in selling any product is that you must reel your catch in quickly while it is still hooked on the bait. This applies just as much to Internet trading as to any other kind of commerce. Setting up a voice connection over the Internet link, which allows the voice to be transported over IP when a user clicks the call-back button on a company?s Web site is the best means of achieving this. Rockwell now supports this using voice/IP technology developed by NetSpeak. A Web site with the company?s Internet call centre software installed on can then generate a voice/IP transaction.

For this to happen, three hurdles must be overcome. First, the user must be equipped to talk over an IP connection, which requires a multimedia PC with headset or speaker/mike, as well as software for converting voice into IP packets at the client end. This is a diminishing obstacle, since most off-the-shelf PCs costing under #1,000 are now multimedia enabled, and client software can be downloaded as a plug-in. Second, the call centre must be able to handle voice/IP connections in the same way as standard calls over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or ISDN.

In the first generation of Internet call centres, the Web site only triggered standard calls. This required a link between a Web site and the outbound calls system from the call centre, but there was no new call medium to handle. With voice/IP, the call centre has to handle calls in the form of IP connections instead of digitised voice, without the usual calling line identifier locating the source of the call.

The answer, according to Reid, is to convert the IP packets back to the standard digital voice bit stream at the call centre end. The digitised voice then gets presented to the automatic call distribution system (see box) as an ordinary trunk so it can then be held in the queue. At this stage, the user can be given messages indicating how long they are likely to wait, and may even be subject to some musak, via the Web site connection.

The fact that the call is coming via a Web site rather than over the normal telephone network may alter how the call centre will handle it. The agent should therefore be told it is a voice/IP connection, and be directed to the Web page the caller is connected to. This might, for example, show what product the caller is interested in or, in the case of technical support scenarios, what sort of problem the caller has. In either case, the call centre agent can start from a position of knowledge and avoid asking the caller for information that has already been given to the Web site.

As Peter Klein, president of Atto International, a vendor of Web servers for electronic commerce, puts it: ?If the customer is looking at a Web page full of shirts, you don?t want the agent asking if they can sell them an overcoat.?

In an ideal world, it would be possible to give call centre agents a Web interface from their desktop PCs, allowing them direct access to the Web page the caller is looking at and enabling them to establish an end-to-end IP connection for exchange of data, as well as voice. The agent could then assume dual control and take over the caller?s Internet session ? perhaps to show a page that contains a product or a solution to a problem.

Alternatively, the caller might want to take control and refer the agent to a particular Web page. Such a link could also be used for downloading files.

Initially, end-to-end links might be used just for data, with the voice coming into the call centre site over IP to be converted to a standard digital stream before being switched out to the agent. In this case, an important and tricky aspect of the installation is to synchronise the transmission of voice and data.

If they are transmitted over the same IP connection ? at least as far as the call centre site ? they should be easier to synchronise than if they ran over separate networks. With a common IP connection, voice and data can be co-ordinated by an application on the Web server or, alternatively, on another server running the call centre application.

Java is emerging as the language to do this, according to George Lafry, director of business development at Nice Systems, a vendor of software for recording call centre activity. ?Some companies are looking at structures comprising IP telephony and Java-based agent-user interfaces?, he says.

The third hurdle to overcome before IP telephony is viable for call centre applications is voice quality. Any network in which data is wrapped up in packets, frames or cells is not ideal for voice, because data is subject to varying delays ? although solutions are now available for improving quality by smoothing out such delays, or providing guaranteed bandwidth (see box ).

Assuming that adequate quality can be guaranteed, there are still some significant issues to be resolved before opening up a call centre to Web access. One previously mentioned is the development effort required to integrate a Web server with call centre systems. Another is the load placed on all systems involved, which include the Web server, the call centre systems, and the voice and data networks. As a result, companies are not opening up their call centres to the whole world at a stroke just yet. Instead, voice/IP is generally an exclusive pilot for selected customers.

But given the uncertainty over whether the Web will prove to be a popular route into call centres, some organisations are understandably reluctant to shell out. Outsourcing the telephony links between a Web site and call centre is one strategy to reduce risk.

Several vendors, such as NetCall, offer services that connect existing Web sites to call centres on a customer?s behalf. ?That?s used by one or two call centres that don?t have the volume of Web-initiated telephony to justify the expenditure?, says NetCall?s operations director, Martin Rogers.

When a user clicks the call-back button on a Web site, the service contacts the call centre and places the customer in a queue. A call is then made to the user via the standard telephone network, and the two ends are conferenced together.

So far, NetCall has shunned the voice/IP option because, says Rogers, ?the quality is substandard?. However, he admits that for callers with just one line for telephone and Internet connection, voice/IP would be useful.

?We might use a traditional telephone link to the call centre, with a voice/IP link to the consumer if there is only one line there?, he says. The use of voice/IP will not be confined to call centres, it will also save money for standard telephony ? particularly within an organisation where a private IP network is already providing cheap connections without the Internet. All of the router vendors now have strategies for rolling out voice/IP support so, with time, private IP networks will be able to provide high-quality voice/IP.

The phasing out of conventional telephony by voice/IP will not happen overnight. In the short term, its role will be restricted to hybrid networks, sometimes as a cheap option on existing phone lines.

In some cases, voice/IP might be an overflow option for use when standard telephone lines are all engaged. It is also possible to obtain software that makes routing decisions on the basis of factors such as time of day so that voice/IP may be used during peak times to save money.

Whatever happens in weeks to come, voice/IP is already poised to deliver the long-promised convergence between data and voice.

Call centre essentials

A call centre has several essential components, starting with a private branch exchange (PBX). Then there has to be software for distributing calls to the right agent. This process, called automatic call distribution (ACD) can be implemented in the telephony switch or on a separate system. Closely associated with the ACD in most modern call centres is an interactive voice response (IVR) system ? the friendly personal voice inviting callers to select options from number menus. The ACD system simply routes the call to an agent it knows to be free and qualified to handle the enquiry. Most Web links into call centres offer an alternative form of IVR, enabling callers to select an option from a menu. Another optional and increasingly prevalent component is a computer telephony integration (CTI) link between the PBX or switch, and some computer-based telephony applications. A CTI link is needed where the incoming calling line identifier (CLI) is used to extract relevant details about the caller from a database and pops these onto a screen in front of the agent. In the case of Internet call centres, it may also be possible to pop up an image of the Web page the caller sees. There are other CTI functions that also rely on the CLI ? one being the use of information about the caller to decide where to route the call. This whole system can be fooled when callers are not using their normal phone. Yet it is possible to associate more than one number with a caller ? then the system can identify the caller correctly whenever a call comes in from any of those numbers. CTI can also be used to automate outward dialling, say, in telemarketing, when potential customers? numbers are extracted from a database and agents hooked up as soon as the connection is made. Usually the software driving the CTI function will run on a dedicated server connected to the telephony switch or PBX, and also to the network interconnecting the PCs on agents? desks