Build a Modern Call Center
Elements of the Windows Server System can help support modern, flexible, customer-pleasing call centers.
by Danielle Ruest and Nelson Ruest

January 10, 2005

Managers of today's call centers live a hard life. Call centers carry many burdens. They need to respond to calls in three minutes or less, integrate with the Web to let the support staff know what the customer did with the product before the call, keep a history of customer complaints, calm testy callers, and more. All of these elements must be orchestrated to ensure customers enjoy a courteous, productive, and speedy experience. After all, unhappy customers are not repeat buyers. Such is a call center manager's lot.

Couple these challenges with the integration of complex analog telephony technologies, and you can see that it can sometimes seem overwhelming for new organizations that want to move into this domain. However, with the advent of Voice over IP and IP telephony, call-center technology has shifted from analog to digital modes, making the implementation of a modern call center much simpler and faster than before.

For an IT manager, the major advantage of this shift is that you no longer need to rely so much on telephony experience to implement a call center. Today, the reliance is much more oriented toward IT experience, making telephony systems much more accessible to the average business, especially because this integration level is now at the distributed processing level.

For example, most IT professionals remember that the original versions of Windows included components such as the Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI). In those days, TAPI was an exciting protocol that didn't do much but promised a lot. Professionals dreamed of a day when computers would be linked to telephone systems to give users an integrated experience. Today, the dream is becoming reality with integrated fax technologies and integrated IP telephone systems that use the network as a transport mechanism. Even cable providers now offer IP telephones in the home. All come at vastly reduced costs compared to traditional telephone systems.

The integration of call-center functions might be easier, but the interaction with customers has moved to a new level that requires multiple modes of communication. Some customers prefer to interact with businesses over the telephone, but others prefer more efficient means of interaction, such as e-mail, instant messaging, and self service through Web-enabled forms. For this and other reasons, call centers needs to offer "multimodal" transactions.

In addition, call centers require the integration of several other concepts, both specific to customer-relationship management and call-center management. For example, when a call comes in, the call-center system must be able to forward it not only to the first available attendant, but also to the first available attendant that has appropriate knowledge about the requirements of the caller. This is called competency-based call forwarding and is a basic principle of call-center technology that is a must, especially in centers that must deal with various services offered by the business.

Larger organizations also might have multiple locations for their call centers. This is especially useful for call centers that must provide nationwide or even international support. Having multiple centers helps deal with the various time zones covered by the call center. Call-center technology must support multiple locations by creating a virtualization of the call center and redirecting calls based on agent availability, no matter where the agent is located. Of course, modern call centers must support other key concepts as well (see the sidebar, "A Call-Center Glossary"). These concepts must fit together with technology to provide complete call-center feature coverage, as well as growth and future integration with evolving technological standards (see Figure 1).

Integrate With a Microsoft Infrastructure
For Windows server-based shops, integrating call-center technologies is easier than before, especially with the release of the Windows Server System. Windows Server 2003 itself supports a vast number of relevant standards—many based on the .NET Framework—that relate directly to the call center. In addition, Microsoft has released new members of the Windows Server System family that relate directly to call-center functions.

All call centers must support multimodal communications by providing integrated e-mail. Organizations using Microsoft technologies often choose Microsoft Exchange Server for this function. Most have already moved to or are on the road to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, a vast improvement on this core set of services.

In addition, Microsoft recently released Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS), a standards-based, instant-messaging solution that, together with Microsoft Office Live Meeting, a hosted interactive meeting space, provides extensive instant collaboration capabilities. LCS 2005 also provides integration with third-party instant-messaging systems such as MSN, AOL, and Yahoo!, making it an ideal internal instant-messaging service for call centers because it lets them respond to customer requests coming from heterogeneous public systems.

LCS' main strength is that it is based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard that provides user presence information. The advantage of relying on this standard is that it can easily tie to Internet Protocol-integrated telephone systems, providing both voice and instant-messaging integration. To further this integration, Microsoft is working on a new SIP client code-named "Istanbul" that brings together instant messaging and IP telephone systems to users' desktops. Istanbul will provide users with an integrated multimedia and onscreen telephone that will let them choose how to interact with callers, either by voice or by instant messaging.

But Microsoft's best offering for call centers today is probably Microsoft Speech Server 2004 (MSS). Speech Server combines telephony, Web applications, and speech processing to provide an integrated voice-enabled system. It uses standards-based approaches to allow organizations to make the most of customer-relationship management and provide integrated call-center services. In fact, MSS is an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that fits directly into call-center requirements.

When designed properly, IVR should handle at least 50 percent of all calls to the center. Microsoft is further enhancing MSS' out-of-the-box functionalities by offering a speech software development kit that allows organizations to create their own voice-integrated systems. By default, MSS supports several kinds of speech applications, including the standard touch-tone interfaces, voice-driven menus, and the more useful multimodal systems. Microsoft offers a more complete and comprehensive experience to customers by tying Speech Server to ASP.NET. It also uses Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) to let developers integrate both text-to-speech conversions and voice input recognition. Some might complain that MSS doesn't support the VoiceXML standard, but SALT is a better fit in a Microsoft-centric world because it integrates directly into Visual Studio .NET and provides a powerful suite of speech tools—all available through the MSS software development kit.

Making TIM, TAS, and SES Work Together
MSS operates through Speech Engine Services (SES) and relies on Telephony Application Services (TAS). TAS interacts with telephony hardware through an abstraction layer called Telephony Interface Manager (TIM), making for a fairly simple installation (see Figure 2). Two TIMs are available currently for MSS: the Intel NetMerge Call Manager and the Intervoice Telephony Interface Manager and Foundation Services. In fact, Microsoft and Intel currently offer a promotional "starter kit" that includes a 180-day evaluation of MSS, as well as an Intel Dialogic D/41JCT-LS Combined Media Board, Intel NetMerge Call Manager, and Intel Dialogic System Release Software, all for $995.

If you have existing telephony hardware, you'll find that both the Intel and the Intervoice TIMs can link to a vast number of telephony boards, making MSS a good solution for IVR integration into the call center. In addition, MSS is available in both a standard and an enterprise edition that support the scalability requirements of most call centers.

Finally, Microsoft also offers customer relationship management (CRM) tools through its Business Solutions group that support customer service management directly. You can use Microsoft CRM Customer Service to manage cases and service requests, as well as route requests to appropriately skilled agents. It also lets you queue requests so customers can see for themselves where their problem resolution stands. It supports the creation and maintenance of service contracts to help ensure accurate billing for support incidents. It also updates relevant contract information automatically each time a case is resolved. You can also link this CRM solution to Microsoft's Financial Business Solutions to provide complete contract and account management services.

If your infrastructure is based on Microsoft technologies, you can easily enhance it to support an integrated call-center system (see Figure 3). All you need to do is add a few additional components from the Windows Server System to create an integrated call center system. Several integrated systems exist today. Some, such as the Genesys or Altitude systems (see Resources), provide full call-center functionality in one integrated software suite that simply plugs into the existing resources your Microsoft-based network offers. Both vendors offer service stacks that build on Microsoft's own approach with the Windows Server System by providing "pluggable" components based on your specific needs.

In today's IP telephony world, call centers have become an IT commodity. If you want to enhance your ability to provide comprehensive customer service by taking advantage of these new capabilities, make sure you move toward an integrated suite of applications that are based on standards. One thing is certain: IP telephony has greatly simplified the implementation of call centers, but it won't stop here. Multimodal technologies are still emerging and will continue to improve both in the short and long terms. This translates in major cost savings and better customer service, but only if you make the right choices for the long term.

About the Authors
Danielle Ruest and Nelson Ruest (MCSE, MCT) are multiple book authors focusing on systems design, administration, and management. They run a consulting company that concentrates on IT infrastructure architecture and change and configuration management. You can reach them at .