Evolving from POTS/PSTN to SS7/SIP

There are several ways to categorize today’s contact centers based on the underlying technology and protocols which provide their capabilities. Knowing and understanding them, at least from a general point of view, is of paramount importance for everyone involved in running a contact center, from engineers and supervisors up to the senior management. In this post and several subsequent ones, we will briefly review the key technologies and protocols involved in various types of contact centers, and how these affect the features and functionality they can offer.

We will start by briefly examining the evolution from the classic circuit – switched telephony that dominated worldwide communications for almost a century and see how it evolved to today’s complex signaling – based protocols that allow a large amount of functionality and value added services to be added to a simple communication session. Appropriate links are provided for more information on several of these terms (most referring to wikipedia).

POTS - PSTN

Classic telephony (usually referred to as P.O.T.S. – Plain Old Telephony Service) has been virtually unchanged over the past century. While it has undergone some changes over the years, most notably the introduction of electronic exchanges and touch-tone dialing (DTMF), the basic principles remain the same. Over the years, a large network of switches came to be, interconnecting telephones all over the world. This network is known as PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and includes a variety of physical interconnection mediums, ranging from copper wire to fiber optic cables and cellular networks, and a number of switches that act as hubs for these mediums.

ISDN: The first step to convergence

While the PSTN network was happily expanding and increasing its coverage in every corner of the globe, a wind of change started blowing in computing labs. The rapid expansion of computers of any type and size soon gave rise to the need of communication between them, to exchange data. Computer communication initially became important for military purposes, but it gradually became apparent that it could be applied in other activities too. As the PSTN was already in place, it was convenient to be used for data transmissions also. However, when the landline was used for data transmission, it was not possible to also use it for telephony at the same time. Thus the technology of ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) was developed, which allows for simultaneous digital transmission of voice and data.

Signaling: Enhancing capabilities in two worlds that are blending

During the same period that the computer and the telephony industry started affecting each other, another important change in mentality started taking place, related to signaling. Signaling refers to the use of signals during the information exchange concerning the establishment and control of a telecommunication circuit and the management of the network.

Traditional POTS/PSTN telephony uses in – band signaling (the signaling information was transmitted in the same channel as voice, along with it) and it offers limited call control capabilities (mostly call establishment and termination). More advanced protocols using in – band signaling, such as ISDN, can offer more capabilities, as they also transfer data along with voice.

Gradually, the need for more advanced communication control capabilities in telephony led to the separation of signaling from the data being transferred. Thus, out – of – band signaling was deployed. Several out – of – bound protocols were developed until the dominant protocol of SS7 became widely used during the last 30 years. SS7 is a common channel signaling system, which means that the signaling for several lines is carried in a single, common channel. We will discuss more details on SS7 and its importance to backbone networks and contact centers on subsequent posts.

Several years later after SS7, a similar signaling protocol was developed for the parallel world of data communications. This protocol, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), similarly offers advanced signaling capabilities to data communications, being able to control transactions while staying independent on the medium used. SIP is the enabling mechanism for the concept of unified communications which is quickly becoming a part of more and more contact centers. Exploring SIP basics is also a very big topic in itself and will be examined in the future.

Contact Center Metrics: Revenue per Call

In the previous post we have discussed the metric of cost per call (or the equivalent cost per minute which can be calculated taking into account the AHT) that is widely used to measure how much money does running the contact center cost to a company. This metric has to be balanced against revenue per call (or the equivalent revenue per minute) in order to lead to improved contact center efficiency.

Revenue per call is calculated by dividing the total amount of revenue the contact center generates compared to the total number of calls handled by the center. While the latter is easy to measure, the total amount of revenue is very hard to measure because of indirect revenue generation that results from contact center operations. For example, having a good customer support may result in the influx of new customers via word of mouth, which is impossible to measure accurately. There are methods, though, to extract estimations generated revenue that are good enough to provide insight on what is going on.

Several contact centers opt to use this metric for agent evaluation. This is rather dangerous, as it may lead the agents to focus too much on earning attribution for bringing additional revenue while at the same time neglecting other, more important overall goals such as FCR and quality of service. Calculating who brought how much revenue also incurs additional complexity to the already complicated estimation techniques used and is often based on additional assumptions. Revenue per call should thus be used with caution and preferably seen in the wide context of the whole contact center rather than individuals or sections.

Typical methods used to increase revenue per call are similar to the ones used to decrease the cost per call:

• Agent training is of utmost importance, helping eliminate costly errors and resulting in quick handling of cases and quality results.
• Deployment of a robust contact center solution gives the tools to the contact center personnel to maximize their efficiency.
• Utilization of effective and efficient business processes to streamline back –end operations.
• Usage of outbound contact center capabilities to proactively take care of potential problems and sell products more effectively.

Contact Center Metrics: Cost per Call

In previous posts we have discussed two of the major contact center metrics used worldwide, the Average Handling Time (AHT) and the First Call Resolution (FCR). We will now discuss, over this post and a subsequent one, two more important metrics are introduced, that are tightly related to each other: Cost per call and Revenue per call. These two metrics can also be combined with AHT and produce the equivalent metrics of cost per minute and revenue per minute that can be also used alternatively.

Cost per Call is calculated by dividing the total operational costs for a period of time by the total number of calls handled by the contact center during this time period. Operational costs can be divided in two categories: the costs of the human resources needed for operating the center and the cost of the equipment and the software required to support them. Reducing cost per call is, naturally, an ongoing goal of almost all contact centers. However the first step before decreasing something is actually measuring it. Most contact center software vendors nowadays include this feature in their standard statistics package offerings, but it needs a lot of effort and organizing to actually measure all the possible cost components accurately for each individual company.

There are various methods to decrease the cost per call:

• Use call monitoring and coaching to improve agent performance. A well – trained agent is capable of providing quality service in low amount of time, thus greatly increases all efficiency metrics.
• Use self – service options such as IVR where it is convenient to do. Well – designed IVR cost is substantially lower than labor costs.
• Improve scheduling and adherence. This can be achieved by using workforce management software.
• Consider outsourcing the software part of the contact center (SaaS). It might be more efficient to do so, especially when the contact center is related to a new venture and you don’t have the data to plan your own efficient in – house solution.
• Use part – time customer service representatives for peak periods.

There are other commonly used methods to decrease cost per call that have to do with dropping the service levels or quality of service. While these methods were commonly used in the past, today smart companies avoid resorting to such measures, as the revenue decrease that results from utilizing such methods can be potentially far higher than the cost savings. Similarly to AHT, cost per call reduction must be performed very carefully, to avoid negatively affecting other, more crucial conditions.

NICE call recording solutions

As of today, I will start presenting some contact center related products and their features, beginning with a very popular interaction recording (also known as call logging) system commissioned by NICE. As we have seen in a previous post, utilization of call logging software is not only an obligation imposed by the law in many countries, but also a very good method to extract useful information from customer interactions.

This product by NICE systems fits well to this mentality. As they mention on their product homepage, Interaction Recording delivers the most comprehensive capabilities for capturing customer interactions, providing organizations operational flexibility and system resiliency while maintaining low total cost of ownership. It enables organizations to record interactions and then to generate valuable business insight through interaction analytics and quality management solutions.

NICE call logger is a server which includes an array of numerous disks, appropriate for storing conversations in real time with high speed and efficiency, so that they can be accessed later. It can not only record voice but also store emails and capture screen displays, fitting nicely in the multi – channel contact center. There also several additional capabilities offered in the bundle such as:

• Call recording over VoIP, time division multiplexer (TDM) or hybrid environments
• Flexible recording and call archiving enabling transparent access to recordings from any location
• Scalable, multi-tier architecture for growing call recording capacity needs
• Support for server and client virtualization solutions
• Comprehensive redundancy to ensure business continuity
• End-to-end media encryption, strong authentication and server hardening for state-of-the-art data security
• Moblie call recording based on an open architecture that can interface directly with the trader’s handset

The above features, not only help a company comply with regulations, but also they ensure access to past calls to resolve any disputes and detect fraud. Furthermore, combined with the same company’s complementary products of Speech Analytics and Quality Monitoring, the logger can become a very good source of information.