Connectivity Solutions

[#1]

Welcome to my blog.

My name is Mike Perry, I am employed by inContact Inc. as their VP or Network Planning and Telecom Products. In a nutshell, I am in charge of Capacity Planning/Management for all production systems, networks and application platforms that make up inContact's core products including the Telecom Network, IP Network, inContact Clusters, Echo, WFM, and eLearning/eHiring.  In addition I oversee the circuit implementations groups and product management for Telecom products.

This blog will be focused on unique ways to connect a customer to the inContact platform, both on the inbound leg of the call as well as the termination leg, typically to a contact center agent. Choices are many here and will include Local Numbers, Toll Free, traditional TDM T-1/ PRI, as well as VoIP and SIP Trunks.  inContact offers many options to accommodate all customer needs from 'rip and replace' to overlay on existing equipment at the customer premise.

I am ok with this blog deviating into not only what is available at inContact, but what is being done in the world in terms of telephony technology, unified messaging which is becoming very hot right now and is all the rage in trade magazines etc. and just about anything else on anyone's mind regarding telephony be it traditional PSTN telephony or VoIP/SIP. Feel free to ask questions, make statements in the form of replies etc. and I'll reply back via the blog to open discussion.

Again, welcome.

Mike

[#2]

Hi Mike -

This is a great topic for a blog. Thanks for taking it on ... I'll be watching specific to at-home agents.  So here's a question... has inContact or its clients had experience with at-home agents using Vonage for their PSTN phone connection with inContact?  Several of our new at-home agents have Vonage and want to use it for their PSTN connection for inContact calls - easy to manipulate, low cost, location flexibility, etc.  Should I expect issues?

Ben

[#3]

Hi Ben, thanks for blogging in.

Great question about Vonage or Vonage like telephone carriers and one that is relevant to others in this community.

Our experience has been that these VoIP CLECs if you will are a great option for the residential user, but not robust enough in terms of their network design to really be a good contact center agent solution for the heavy user.  We find that some users don't have problems while others have massive problems with latency, and jitter.  The difficulty is when they do have problems, you get into a finger pointing dual with the ISP blaming the VoIP provider and vice versa.

The benefit of using an inContact provided VoIP solution (which are very reasonably priced and eliminate the inbound per minute cost from inContact) is one point of contact, a proven network architecture and equipment offering and an overall better experience.

We have one customer for example with 300 + agents -- all at home.  They tried other solutions and found no consistency and poor quality which was a direct reflection on their company.  They came to us and we designed a cookie cutter solution that they could roll out to agents across the globe, with the same equipment, and same network design in the home and they have had great success.

I certainly won't talk badly of any other provider, but I can tell you from our experience, customers have a better user and end-client experience using a platform that was engineered to endure the heavy call volumes of an agent and left the residential offering to the infrequent user.

Hope this helps.

Mike