1. What market sectors in the contact center arena is Cisco focusing on? What directions can we anticipate that Cisco will take in the upcoming year? What do you anticipate will be your major challenges?
The Cisco Customer Interaction Network has solutions for the Commercial, Enterprise and Service Provider or Managed Service markets. While Cisco is known for delivering contact centers for large enterprises or service providers, it is not yet known enough in the Commercial or small business space. Our biggest challenge is to generate specific awareness and have the market understand that we have a segmented offer which can take the different needs into account.
In addition, we see the reporting and analytics arena as an interesting area with lots of opportunity.
2. What has been the receptivity to the Cisco IP Communications solution? Are people opting for the “pure” IP approach or a hybrid implementation?
We have seen tremendous growth in the number of customers and IP agent shipments over the past several years. Many companies move toward a “pure” IP approach when faced with brand new contact center deployments. For customers with existing contact center infrastructure they prefer a hybrid approach, solutions that allow them to migrate from their existing TDM call centers to IP. Our Customer Voice Portal (CVP) offers customers a way to migrate to IP at a comfortable pace.
3. What have been the “real world” impediments to successfully installing your IP solution?
Many companies initiate IT projects without clearly linking their technology with concrete business outcomes. Organizations must take the time to create a detailed business case for their contact centers. They must specify what they wish to accomplish and how their contact centers will help them achieve their goals.
4. What roadblocks is Cisco encountering in convincing prospects that IP is the right approach for their centers?
Feature functionality and security are two of the key concerns we face with customers. We have to ensure that customers will be able to manage their business and provide the same level of customer service to their customers. TDM-based users are often surprised by the rich functionality of IP-based contact centers. Distributed by nature, a versatile IP-based system lets a single IP contact center manage all sites, delivering greater security, scalability and adaptability to different business processes. In contrast, a TDM deployment requires separate administration of each site, necessitating a greater financial and personnel burden.
With IP, greater information is available to agents, allowing them to better resolve issues and even use the call to sell new products and services. Moreover, the customer experience is consistent, whether initial contact is made through agents, through self-service or through the Web. With IP-based contact centers, organizations have a wide range of reporting and measuring options,
5. How do you differentiate your IP solutions from the many competitors in this marketing sector?
Cisco provides a real, end-to-end IP solution, not a so-called hybrid solution which does not provide all of the benefits one can expect from IP. Our architecture is different in that it lays on a centralized call control, which directs calls from gateways or end points to end points. Hybrid systems have to terminate each call in the PBX, which is much more costly and much less flexible. Our contact center applications are built as part of an overall IP network solution. This simplifies system management and support; there is no “finger pointing” between the network and the application when it comes to troubleshooting problems.
6. Self service and speech applications are getting an increased amount of attention. How is Cisco addressing these applications?
The Cisco Customer Voice Portal redefines and sets the standard for extending automated self-service beyond the limits of traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems and voice portal platforms by providing a return on investment (ROI) to lower operational costs in the contact center and help protect technology investments from obsolescence to provide a smooth and consistent multi-channel customer experience.
The Cisco Customer Voice Portal integrates with both traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) and IP-based contact centers to provide an unparalleled call-management and call-treatment solution with a self-service IVR option that can use information available to customers on the corporate Web server. With support for automated speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities, callers can obtain personalized answers to increasingly complex questions and can conduct business in new and innovative ways—all without the costs of interacting with a live agent.
7. Can you please comment on the current economic and sales environment in the contact center market. How has the current conditions affected your sales cycles?
Customers are increasingly receptive to the benefits that the Customer Interaction Network can bring to them. Investment in contact centers, and particularly in Cisco’s products, are seen both as delivering both cost reduction and revenue boost. Customers do conduct due diligence on their vendors, and contact centers in large enterprises are complex systems at the heart of the business, so sales cycles can be long – but they not always are.
8. Many companies in the contact center market have established a reseller channel but have found this approach tough going for many reasons. What is Cisco’s approach towards establishing these reseller channels? Has it been effective?
At Cisco we have developed a very successful reseller channel with some of the top industry resellers, and provide a direct sales channel as well. We have created an in depth sales and support training program in order to “certify” our channel partners on our contact center solutions and ensure their success and customer satisfaction. Our Cisco sales teams work closely with our channel partners and we can provide deployment support if requested.