I'm Getting Sold On UC in the CCI'm Getting Sold On UC in the CC

I had an interesting briefing with AspectSoftware yesterday. They got in touch with me after I blogged about my doubts about leveraging knowledge workers for the contact center, and the discussion was eye-opening.Tom Chamberlain, Director of Business Process Marketing, says that 10% of all customer interactions need some kind of support outside the contact center, according to a recent survey conducted by the company. The ability to grab someone with both the skill and availability at the right time is key in those cases, and thats what Aspect is trying to do with its own Unified IP product, and its recent integration with Microsoft OCS.Looking at the numbers, every hour a rep is on the phone supporting customers, he or she is reaching out at least once to someone else within the enterprise. In a 200-person contact center, that's a lot of ad-hoc interruptions. So the goal isn't so much to inject behavior into the contact center, as to support behavior that's already there.That meansdelivering a level of predictability in engagement and scheduling, to both the contact center reps and the knowledge workers they're tapping. As Chamberlain said,Theyre already calling their friend Joe, who they dont think of as a knowledge worker, but thats what he is, and now he cant do his day job."With Aspects software, companies can see how many and what kinds of experts the contact center will need at a given time. So a contact center manager might tell a product manager to expect to be on call from 9am-10am on Mondays and Thursdays, based on the organization's historic need. Chamberlain expects that to help deliver predictability to those people who are already being interrupted: Its happening anyway; Aspect just wants to formalize the process.Furthermore, with an ad-hoc system,theres no learning, no process improvement, no way to capture and share useful information. But with a formalized system, companiescan run reports, spot trends, adjust training, add to their knowledge base, and actually lower the number of enterprise interactions. Reducing the 10% number is a good thing, because those calls cost, on average, $2 more.