Mark J. Michelson Sr.

President

JEMMM Connections, LLC

mark.michelson@jemmm.com

office: 630-219-1220

mobile:630-688-2108

In a never ending quest to find ways to simplify contact center solutions, I have begun to delve down into the world of hosted and managed contact centers to uncover the simplification that these offerings provide when starting up as well as running a contact center.   I come from a contact center application provider background where we provided some fairly robust and complex on-premise solutions.  Over the past week I had the opportunity to test drive the Northwinds Contact Solutions Virtual Call Center platform. 

In reviewing the platform, I was impressed with the simplicity by which a user is able to configure an inbound, outbound, blended, or automated call type.   The entire experience is via an extremely easy to use web-based interface.  In the matter of minutes I was able to configure a simple inbound application that would play an auto-attendant message, receive DTMF input, and route to a group of agents that have signed in to handle calls for that call type.   The outbound side was just as easy with a straightforward call list import and export mechanism.

The simplicity does, however, come at a price that relinquishes the end-user from having some of the detailed ‘parameter tweaking’ possible with some of the more robust platforms on the market.  That’s not to say that in all cases that’s a bad thing.   After growing up in the premise platform development world the typical phrase we all used as the platforms evolved and became more open and flexible was “With flexibility, comes complexity”.  While the Northwinds platform takes away some of the configuration capabilities other platforms may have, by doing so it also has reduced the complexity to the end user.

The system has most of the typical call center features such as automated attendant, call recording, call dispositions, agent monitoring.  There are features that are not present such as supervisor barge-in that may or may not be important to a customer’s contact center.  I believe the strength of this solution is that it has many of the most needed features offered in a simple to use manner.  Whenever investigating a contact center provider you need to identify the detailed features that are absolutely required for your environment, from there you can decide if the platform has all that you need for your solution. 

On the monitoring and historical sides, the system does come with some views into the agents, call traffic, and the call lists.  It’s not an exhaustive list as provided by some platforms I’m familiar with but again the question is really whether the system has enough to suit individual customer’s needs.  In speaking with the Northwinds team, the professional services team has tools available that allow them to extend reporting to custom reports required by customers if needed.

One area I believe, from my wonderings in the contact center industry, is that the platform could truly benefit from is a stronger, more open approach to more advanced voice applications (IVR).  In my discussions with the Northwinds team, I understand the approach is that more advanced IVR applications beyond basic auto-attendant are a professional services engagement by the Northwinds services team.  I believe the approach they have gone with is admirable in keeping the complexity away from the end users, however the flexibility at the automated call treatment side is something that may be needed by some customers.

Since my review was over a short period of time and really focused on the configuration and admin of the system, I was not able to delve into the core infrastructure, connectivity, redundancy, and the strength of the company behind it.  All of these are areas that anyone looking into a hosted contact center partner need to look into.  However, from a configuration and functionality standpoint I feel the platform has most of the core capabilities that smaller to mid-sized and less complex contact centers need.

At JEMMM Connections, we strive to be the premier contact center consulting and implementation partner for our customers. We focus on defining, implementing, and improving our customer’s contact center solutions.   At JEMMM Connections, we have a strong background in creating contact center solutions by working as partners with our customers; from definition to implementation. Our experience is in both premise-based and hosted contact center solutions.  We help our customers choose the best approach to a contact center solution that meets their needs.  It is JEMMM Connections’ goal to Simplify contact center Solutions (SccS) for our customers.  Visit us at www.jemmm.com.