Nobody ever said that managing a contact center was an easy feat. The factors that cannot easily be controlled—irate customers, equipment/service outages, call volume spikes, keeping up with new campaigns—are challenging enough. Many companies are recognizing the absolute necessity of making the management and administration of multiple call centers as streamlined as possible as a way of creating order over the factors that CAN be controlled.

 

It's easy to see that for every step a company takes to increase the efficiency in the administration and reporting of its call centers, that step translates to a direct improvement of the service offered to customers and, therefore, the sales generated by the contact centers.

 

Aspect (News - Alert) Software, Inc., today announced the general availability of Unified Command and Control, a new solution that enables contact centers to centralize their reporting, routing, administration and workflow management in a single console, resulting in reduced complexity, increased productivity and the ability to deliver an improved customer experience. Unified Command and Control helps manage as many as 40 different nodes for as many as 40,000 agents, either within a single site or across multiple contact center locations.

 

Unified Command and Control, a key component of the Aspect Software unified approach, opens the door for expanded virtualization by increasing an organization’s ability to manage and control multiple contact centers and applications. It enables contact centers to leverage existing investments in Aspect Software solutions while also seamlessly moving to new session initiation protocol (SIP)-based voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) platforms.

 

Since Unified Command and Control was built upon a service-oriented architecture (SOA), it enables third parties or Aspect Software partners to build their own adapters into their own products or other, similarly open, products in the future.

 

“With Unified Command and Control, we have access to consolidated, detailed information on our four contact centers and their performance as things happen,” said Mark Good, vice president of information systems, LCA-Vision, Inc. “Having synchronized information that is easy to manage helps us make decisions and take a more active approach to planning our customer care initiatives for the future. Unified Command and Control gives us the flexibility and control we need to successfully manage our multisite operations.”

 

This initial release of Unified Command and Control provides administration, reporting, and routing for Aspect CallCenter ACD 9.3 and the workforce management capability of PerformanceEdge, Aspect eWorkforce Management 7.1. Upcoming versions of Unified Command and Control will offer enhanced administration, routing and workflow capabilities targeted toward other Aspect Software products, including Aspect Spectrum (News - Alert) ACD, Aspect Unified IP, and the quality and performance management capabilities of PerformanceEdge.

 

Aspect CallCenter ACD 9.3 delivers improved operating efficiency, reliability, scalability and security and reduces costs through enhanced features and tight integration with Unified Command and Control for enterprise administration. 

 

Important new Aspect CallCenter ACD 9.3 capabilities include expanded use of SIP/VoIP for inter-site connectivity, new redundant and expanded voice system options, significantly increased Call Control Table and Application limits, and enhanced password flexibility and complexity. Centralized management across multiple systems, including agent groups, trunk groups, and supervisor teams, can be copied between multiple Aspect CallCenter ACD 9.3 systems.

 

Through Unified Command and Control, any changes in agent data and staffing information can be automatically sent to Aspect eWorkforce Management 7.1. As an enterprise application, Aspect eWorkforce Management has unifying capabilities for its multisite customers, offering centralized management of agents regardless of their physical location.

 

Unified Command and Control extends this unification of agent information, not only across multiple contact center locations, but also across disparate agent resource management applications including workforce management, routing platforms, quality, and performance management.

 

By consolidating data from various contact center applications, Unified Command and Control enables businesses to eliminate areas of duplication and reduce operating costs associated with managing agent profiles. Unified Command and Control lets them use one system to facilitate all agent moves, adds, and changes across sites, and enables local survivable nodes, ensuring business continuity during a local network failure or in the event of a disaster.

 

“Our customers are continuously looking for avenues to gain greater control and improve scalability and workloads across the enterprise,” said Gary Barnett, chief technology officer and executive vice president, Aspect Software. “Unified Command and Control is delivering these virtualization capabilities and will change the way companies manage their contact center operations. From large, multi-national organizations with several contact centers around the globe, to small and mid-size companies with virtual remote agents, multiple ACDs and performance optimization products, our customers are seeing the benefits of SIP-based, VoIP-enabled solutions to gain a competitive advantage.”

 

For more information, visit www.aspect.com.