BRAD TOTTEN

Brad Totten, PMP

Customer Experience Advocate

Brad Totten – Consulting

(805) 405-5159 cell

 is a 20-year veteran of the Contact Center space.  He is a certified Project Management Professional and currently offers consulting services in contact center infrastructure design and implementation.

I have always managed to be ahead of the curve when it comes to contact center technology, sometimes a little too far ahead for my own good.  Lately old age and wisdom have settled in and I am not so quick to jump on the latest trend.  I have learned the important lesson of “supporting infrastructure”.  This was the lesson I learned back in 2001, after spending my own money and investing a lot of time and energy in launching an alternative transport service using Session Initiation Protocol.  While SIP went on to became the default standard for Voice over Internet Protocol, (VoIP), we were about 4 years ahead of the infrastructure curve and our visions of IP based call centers were dashed when we ran out of money and couldn’t get funding.

Fast-forward five years to 2006, the Yankee Group publishes a paper entitled “VoIP and Lower TCO Will Drive Adoption of Hosted On-Demand Contact Centers”.  The keys to this emerging trend that they identify were:

• “The transition from circuit-switched voice to packet”
• “The increased demand for integrated suites versus best-of-breed components”
• “The TCO-driven shift to technology on-demand instead of owned”[1]

Besides a corporate migration to IP based telephony, we have seen the rapid expansion of infrastructure to homes of high-speed network services.  With fiber optics and cable now reaching the majority of households, we can enjoy the network connectivity speeds that were once reserved for corporate environments.  This was our missing link.

 In the three years since the Yankee Group published their findings we have seen the emergence of several players offering their hosted solutions.  When looking at the various offerings one of the key questions I ask is, “Where are your servers located and what is your connectivity to the Public Switched Telephone Network, PSTN?”

 To me the contact center is mission critical and having a service provider that has built their infrastructure to meet 99.999% availability is number one in my book.

 I recently had the pleasure to meet Steven Cramer, SVP of Operations at Northwinds Contact Solutions.   Northwinds provides hosted and managed contact center services from the prospective of someone that has managed large contact centers for over twenty years.  I embrace the philosophical approach they have taken to providing a top-notch virtual contact center environment.

 To meet my first criteria of having Local Exchange Carrier, LEC, level connectivity to the PSTN, Northwinds Contact Solutions has redundant servers collocated in telecommunications switching facilities of Cox Communications.  The fact that Cox uses Northwinds Contact Solutions for their customer service contact center and that Cox was the recipient of the JD Power and Associates 2009 Residential Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study^SM Award was not lost on me.

The next area where Northwinds excels is in their ability to address their clients’ unique needs with customization.  Backend legacy systems are not an issue as Northwinds includes integration services for each clients’ specific needs.

 Integrated services such as Outbound IVR and call recording are all part of a seamless offering.  Northwinds provides 24/7 customer support with live agents, a further example of their commitment to customer satisfaction.

 I had the opportunity to use the system to add an agent, create a campaign, make calls and listen to the recordings.  In all cases, even without a Quality of Service, (QoS), cable modem, the voice was perfect.  I used a Logitech USB Clear Connect headset and microphone to make and receive calls.  The soft-phone provided was easy to use and I did not need much in the way of coaching to be up and running.

 If you are not looking at migrating off your existing switched based contact center technology, you should.  Managed and hosted services are much more cost effective and they are providing the integration of essential features that best-of-breed has failed to achieve.

 Make sure when looking at MSP’s that you understand their infrastructure, its advantages and limitations, the company’s willingness to provide custom integration services as well as their commitment to your support and satisfaction.  These are important elements in selecting the correct partner.

brad@customerexperienceadvocate.com

[1] VoIP and the Lower TCO Will Drive Adoption of Hosted On-Demand Contact Centers by Ken Landoline, April 2006, Page 2