Frequently Asked
Questions
Learn how a virtual call center provider can help your company.
For those new to the concept of hosted services, here are some frequently asked questions about hosted vs. premises-based systems and the benefits of Centergy® Virtual Contact Center.
What does virtual mean?
Virtual simply means that the users are no longer tied to a specific location or hardware in order to fully use an application.
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How does this apply to contact centers?
For a hosted contact center, virtual means that a person can become an agent in the contact center using any telephone and an internet connection. There is no hardware or software to install, manage or maintain.
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Where do the agents and supervisors work?
Because a truly virtual system can use the existing telephone on the agent's desk there are no longer any physical limitations to a contact center. Agents can work in an existing center, at home, at remote offices, and alternate locations as required. They can even work in a temporary disaster center in case their normal offices become unusable.
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How does a hosted service work?
Aastra OnDemand has implemented a secure, highly reliable contact center application suite in a hardened data center. Agents and supervisors access the center via an internet browser and their existing phone line. These systems are fully redundant and multi-tenant for the highest reliability, privacy and performance. Because the systems are shared, the cost of owning and operating the centers is spread across many users, keeping costs low and efficiency high.
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What does multi-tenant mean?
Service providers serve multiple clients or tenants from central locations. These clients must be partitioned in a manner that prevents one from impacting another's operations or accessing another's information.
One method of implementing this separation of clients is to use a separate set of hardware for each client or tenant. This is effective at small scales but becomes expensive and cumbersome for the operator as the systems grow.
A more effective method is to design the systems from the ground up to isolate the operations and data of each user from each other but share the infrastructure for lower costs and higher reliability.
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How does an agent access CVCC?
The contact center agent or supervisor uses their internet browser to access and log into the Centergy Virtual Contact Center system. During the login process they also identify the location where they will receive calls. All interaction with the system is via the web browser. When the powerful workflow engine in CVCC matches a caller to the agent a call is placed to the phone number of the agent. In a busy center this connection is maintained from call to call for maximum efficiency.
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How does CVCC save me money?
Owning, operating, managing and maintaining the servers and networks required to support a modern call center is complex, time consuming and requires unique specialized technical expertise. This is expensive for large organizations and prohibitive for many smaller ones. Even so-called single-box contact center solutions require expensive infrastructure and technical resources.
By utilizing a set of servers managed by a highly skilled team of call center experts and shared across many clients, Aastra OnDemand can provide a high functionality contact center environment for a low monthly charge per agent that is up to 45% lower than the cost of operating an in-house system.
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I have multiple contact center locations; does CVCC address this?
Absolutely; in fact, all of the benefits of a hosted solution are magnified when applied to contact centers operating in multiple locations. Centers operating in multiple locations have even more infrastructure, systems, software, and maintenance costs than a single system so the potential savings are huge.
Additionally, a single contact center environment running across all of your locations will provide more effective routing of calls to qualified agents so callers are handled faster and more effectively. This improves the caller experience and reduces agent frustration and turnover. Your company will also benefit from a single enterprise-wide view of the performance of your contact centers.
For the first time you will have a complete and accurate picture of the performance of every agent, team, call type and contact center that can be used to effectively make decisions about what's working well and what needs improvement.
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Can I use CVCC if I have large seasonal peaks in demand?
This is one of the big strengths of a hosted solution: you can purchase on a per month, per agent basis. You purchase only the level of services you need on an on-going basis and then add agents as needed during the busy times; only paying for them during the months they are active.
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How hard is it to learn CVCC?
CVCC has been designed to be highly functional but very easy to learn and use. The agent and supervisor training is provided in web-based on-line training modules accessible from anywhere. The total agent training time is about 40 minutes and a supervisor needs an additional 45 minutes. This means that you can now utilize employees as agents during peak calling hours that could not be used before due to the complexity of the systems. Even people who only need to access the systems a few days or hours a month will not have trouble being an effective user of CVCC.
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What capabilities does CVCC have?
CVCC is a full featured contact center system with the following major components:
- Skills-Based Routing
- Agent-to-Agent Call Transfer Notes
- Powerful Call-Flow Scripting
- Real-Time Reporting
- Interactive Voice Response
- Historical Reporting
- Call Monitoring (live calls in four modes)
- Agent Desktop Integration (screen pop)
- Call Recording (on-demand, statistical or all-calls)
- Back Office Integration (data directed routing)
- Agent Statistics Ticker (reader board on the agents screen)
- Third Party Application Integration
- Agent-to-Supervisor Instant Messaging
- Email, SMS, etc. Notification of Center Conditions
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How many agents do I need to use CVCC?
Because CVCC is a service it has no lower limit on the number of agents. It can be effectively implemented with as few as 1 agent and as many as 10,000 agents.
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How long does it take to implement CVCC?
Aastra OnDemand has implemented a new contact center in as little as 2 hours, though this is not typical. You will be contacted within a few hours of contract acceptance by one of our project managers to begin defining your call flow and call treatments. From there it is usually a few days to a few weeks to a full cutover.
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Why is Aastra Ondemand the right service provider for me?
We have been building and operating large scale, high performance mission critical contact centers for some of the world's most demanding companies for the past 20 plus years. This has taught us the true importance of a contact center to the success and survival of our clients.
We are now making this expertise available to companies of any size with our CVCC hosted service offering. We developed CVCC from scratch and fully control the technology and the service delivery platform. Our expert contact center professionals are available to help you define and perfect your contact center. We have a full professional services group that can address even the most complex situation.
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Do I need to have special phones to work with CVCC?
No, any telephone that can be called with a 10-digit number will work.
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Can my agents be located outside of the United States or Canada?
Yes, CVCC is capable of addressing telephones in most countries of the world.
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Can CVCC easily integrate with my CRM package(s)?
Yes. CVCC can integrate with external applications and databases via the Application Bridge. This is a tool that makes it easy to setup data exchanges between CVCC and external applications that exist on your site or on other hosted sites or at the agent's desktop. The integration can be used to influence call routing, populate the agent's desktop application when the call arrives or provide information about the call for storage in applications like CRM.
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If I purchase CVCC will I need to sign a long contract?
No, CVCC is available for terms as short as 1 year and demo and test accounts can be obtained for even shorter periods.
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Can I use a VOIP telephone?
Yes, as long as it can be dialed with a ten digit number.
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Is a telephone all I need to access the system?
In addition to the telephone you will need a PC with an internet connection and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Agents and supervisors interact with CVCC using Internet Explorer and the phone is only used to provide a voice path between the caller and the agent.
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