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Cisco IP Contact Center MigrationCisco has long been recognized as the leader in Internet networking. As such, it knows firsthand the importance of leveraging a VoIP network to improve all aspects of its business�from delivering "best-in-class" customer service, support, and sales to assisting employees with internal help desk, travel scheduling, and benefit-related inquiries. As the "face" of Cisco to its internal and external customers and partners, Cisco contact centers rely on leading-edge technology to resolve customer issues quickly and thoroughly. A worldwide organization, Cisco has more than 35 internal and outsourced locations handling customer support and service functions. More than 600 customer service agents working in Cisco contact centers handle more than 100,000 calls per week as well as a multitude of e-mails and web requests. How We StartedThe success of the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) deployment of advanced customer contact software and the deep conviction that Cisco had in the benefits of an IP infrastructure caused Doug Allred, senior vice president of customer advocacy, to issue a challenge to Cisco global contact centers. The challenge was to follow the Cisco TAC lead and dramatically improve the ways in which customers are serviced across all Cisco contact centers worldwide�but take it one step further and deploy it all on IP. This mandate resulted in the creation of a cross-functional team to ensure clear communication and synergy among the more than 35 contact centers (see Figure 7-5). Key team leads included LaVeta Gibbs, director of the technical support group, and Cindy Mike, global program manager for the Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) Enterprise Edition and Cisco IPCC Express Edition deployment. Figure 7-5. IPCC Migration Program Structure[View full size image] Although the migration was targeted for a fast track, the process and structure for managing the migration was well thought-out and concise. The project team used the following methods to complete the migration:
"The exciting part of moving toward a pure IPCC environment is that it changes how we interact with customers. When we combine the web, data, and voice as a way to interact with our customers, the voice part becomes complementary�not the main event," says LaVeta Gibbs. The Cisco IPCC achieved the next step in improving customer service and provided a comprehensive customer interaction network. Our goal was to migrate all of our front line contact centers to a cross-functional, virtual organization that could showcase Cisco products, best practices, and the power of the Internet. In 1999, as a result of numerous acquisitions, our call center environment consisted of many small, independent call centers that were "stovepiped" due to inconsistent tools and service levels and no standard naming conventions or standard skills. The front line contact centers had 26 unique group names, 42 unique department codes, 23 unique vendors, 22 Cisco sites, 1000 employees, and 539 different dial-in numbers. In addition, the contact centers worked from different platforms, and we had no reporting visibility into those who were outsourced. It was clear that we needed to integrate the entire operation and establish standardization, operational efficiency, and a clear reporting mechanism that would improve service to our customers. Our Intelligent Call Management (ICM) project launch began in October 1999 and included time-division multiplexing (TDM) PBX-based call centers in 10 locations with TDM-based reporting. It gave us 100 percent call throughput with a fully redundant infrastructure, provided flexibility, and reduced transport and support costs. However, that was only the first step. Going one step further, we have now integrated our IPCC that wraps around our newly installed Cisco Call Manager technology, utilizes automatic call distribution and standardized call routing rules, and queues calls through our Cisco IP interactive voice response (IVR). Reporting is performed in the Cisco Webview reporting package, and the call control is managed by the Cisco agent desktop rather than the phone. This solution enables us not only to showcase Cisco products, but also to provide feedback to the business units to enable immediate and continuous improvement. We have completely removed competitor technology and have not only reduced our transport and support costs even further, but laid the foundation for changing the way we interact with customers. Our new customer contact solution offers a more streamlined and efficient system. We can route calls more easily to the right skilled agent and decrease caller on-hold time by seamlessly routing callers to the right solution based on their answer selection. Site Deployment DesignFigure 7-6 illustrates how the production CallManager integrated with the new customer contact center solution. Figure 7-6. Site Deployment Design[View full size image] An example of a Cisco contact center relying on Cisco IPCC Enterprise is the Global Call Center (GCC), a worldwide organization composed of multiple teams, each with a distinct functionality. These teams include the customer response center (CRC), which provides customer support through basic level technical assistance; service relations, which manages customer entitlement to Cisco support; GCC escalations, which resolves issues escalated by the CRC; and acquisitions and special handling (ASH), which provides customized support for the Cisco service provider and other customers. Contact centers are maintained in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; San Jose, California; Sydney, Australia; Brussels, Belgium; Salt Lake City, Utah; Jacksonville, Florida; and Milton-Keynes, United Kingdom, supporting more than 50 countries, 82 toll-free and in-country numbers, and more than 80,000 calls per month. More than ten large contact centers in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East were included in the migration to an IP infrastructure, with Cisco IPCC Enterprise serving as the backbone. Another 13 sites were migrated to Cisco IPCC Express. Cisco IPCC Express provided the necessary capabilities to bring online all the smaller Cisco contact centers, including some TACs and GCCs in Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe; and some internal Cisco help desk operations, including stock administration, Cisco capital leasing, investor relations, and corporate travel. The Cisco IPCC Express solution provides these organizations with simplified call routing options, easy scripting and administration, agent flexibility, as well as detailed reporting for small teams. Figure 7-7 shows the resulting Worldwide Contact Center. Figure 7-7. Worldwide Contact Center[View full size image] Implementation ApproachFollowing the best practices we learned during the IP Telephony implementation, we once again developed a team based on executive sponsorship, a Tiger Team deployment strategy, and a well-formed communication plan. The entire initiative, deployed across all theaters, involved no travel. Twelve agents were deployed in the first two months with our new 902 exchange. (We created a separate cluster for our San Jose contact center agents so that we could better manage them.) The deployment integrated 12 groups of agents, seven server CallManager clusters, four IP interactive voice responses (IPIVRs), 6 Peripheral Gateways (PGs), ICM SoftPhone and Webview software, and Cluster Management Suite software (CMS). In the first two months, more than 2700 calls per month were taken. The implementation approach as shown in Figure 7-8 followed a phased approach and allowed us to strengthen our migration strategy after each increasingly critical phase was completed. Figure 7-8. Application Implementation ApproachTIP Create an agent survey to measure the success of the migration. Use this data to adjust your strategy and to fix mistakes in your implementation approach. The contact center migration included project challenges, unique design solutions, and specific measurable results, all attributing to a successful contact center migration. The following sections detail a few of the variables that the team identified and resolved during the migration. ChallengesThe list that follows documents some of the challenges identified during the contact center migration:
Design SolutionsThe list that follows documents some of the unique design solutions deployed during the contact center migration:
ResultsThe goals and benefits of this initiative were clear:
Cisco has seen its customer satisfaction levels increase substantially since installing Cisco IPCC Enterprise in its contact center environment. Cisco IPCC Enterprise replaced Lucent/Avaya ACDs at more than ten Cisco contact center sites. "This has been an incredible effort," says Gibbs. "The project has been a real Cisco-wide endeavor encompassing resources from throughout Cisco: the business units, TAC, AVVID design/engineering and voice services, as well as all the individual contact center managers�internal, external, and outsourced. Everyone has truly worked together in the spirit of meeting this challenge!" "We wanted to become free of traditional PBX hardware and remove contact center dependencies in Cisco's effort to be a complete IP voice and data network company," says Cisco Global Program Manager Cindy Mike. "We're now well on our way to achieving that goal. The project also enabled us to truly understand our global contact center landscape and have significant insight and 'best practices' to share with our customers." BenefitsFollowing are some benefits from the Cisco IP customer contact implementation:
"We also created a new Internet best practice with this project," says Mike. "The entire deployment was managed using the web as a project platform. Software was posted for the contact centers to download, avoiding the need for travel; status reports and directives were shared on the web; training, support resources, implementation details, and client information were all available to all team members via the Internet. It was truly a 'virtual' project�and that contributed greatly to our ability to meet the aggressive deadlines that were set." "Phase one is just the foundation," says Doug Allred. "Only after we have the foundation in place can we begin to dream and change the way we interact with our customers." NOTE You can find more information about the Cisco IPCC migration at the following sites:
You can find Cisco best practices for an IPCC migration at http://www.cisco.com/partner/WWChannels/technologies/IPCC/index.html. (A Cisco.com login is required.) |
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