Last Edited: 7-17-2004

The 1999 Spring CTI EXPO was held May 24-26 in Washington D.C.. sponsored by Technology Marketing Corp

I attended to pick up ideas on  services.

The most interesting services ideas came from Interactive Intelligence.

• They offer an "everything in a box" solution. A WinNT box serves as a PBX, ACD, and LAN.
• Apparently, one can take a server, add Intel/Dialogic type line and trunk cards, a few ethernet cards, do switching on the backplane, and we have everything in a box!!!
• The company claims to be 4 years old. I first saw them 2 yrs ago at the Computer Telephony show. I don't know how big they are, but they gave an impressive show/demo.
• The key here seems to be in being able to offer a Greenfield/Desert start. One would have to be willing to toss out the legacy PBX, LAN, ACD, Predictive Dialer, etc. Once most functions are in a single server. It becomes much easier to come up with interesting services that interact. Some of the more interesting Call Center services are:
  • While you are on hold, you get an estimated hold time and number in line. For example, "you are 5th in line and the expected wait time is 12 minutes..."
  • Premium Q-ing. For example, after you have heard the above message, you may not want to wait. You can then buy your way to the top of the queue using IVR and giving a credit card number.
  • Multimedia Q-ing is also possible. Today, e-mail queries to a web site take 3-5 days for a response. Now, e-mail can be Q-ed for an operator just like calls...
  • For e-mail responses, most questions can be handled from a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. Therefore, a list of "canned" responses is available to the operator so that they don't have to type each one. This is also useful in getting consistent responses across operators.
  • TTS can be used to read e-mail messages (I think this has been out for a while..or has been talked about  for a while...)
• Business Cards: This was mentioned at the demo and also by one of their presenters at a technical session. Your business card probably has 4 or more different ways you can be reached:
  • Phone
  • Email (the one people want most business associates to use)
  • FAX
  • Cell Phone
  • Pager
  • not to mention website & US Mail

  They show a form of integrated messaging where based on Caller-ID and/or IVR, callers can be directed to the appropriate media type.

• Conference Calls
  • are not limited to 3 or 6 ports.
  • text can be sent to some participants..sort of as a side conversation.
  • One can record a conf call and e-mail it to those who missed the call.
    
• Other products/technologies packaged with this include:
  • Microsoft Outlook for the Mailboxes
  • JAVA for a visual SCE.
  • JAVA virtual machine (for the kernel?); multi threaded, multi services
    
• The system can have 200-300 lines/server. In the future, servers can be linked together with ATM. This would seem to be adequate for all but the largest enterprises.
• After the show/demo (which was 30-45min), I asked how reliable it was given that it was based on WinNT. He said that they use failover with A/B switches, not the Microsoft Wolfpack. Interactive Intelligence does the software and they have VARs doing the hardware. He showed a 1 min video from his PC that showed their CEO doing a demonstration. he took a sledge hammer and smashed the active server and the other server took over....at least that's what he claimed happened. I assume that any fault tolerant or fault resilient system would pass such a test...it's just that most vendors didn't create such a dramatic demo.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS:

• A major theme in the show was convergence!
  • Both in handling multimedia (e.g., wireless/wireline/IP/ATM/voice/video) on a single infrastructure.
  • And in trying to do more functions on a single box/server. Interactive Intelligence seemed to have compressed most functions down to a single WinNT server! They appeared to be the best at it.
• Also, even though this was a CTI conference, there was a lot of talk of VoIP! The common theme was that days of arbitrage (cheaper phone calls) as the main reason for VoIP are nearly over. Circuit switched rates are low now (e.g., 2.5 cents/min USA-to-London in some cases)(possibly due to competition from VoIP) There needs to be another reason for VoIP.
  
• What I saw on the show floor...
  • Computers, Hardware (e.g., tote board displays), magazines, PBX in a box, CTI Server Call Centers, ACDs, United Nations-type language translation, modems, etc...
  • Lots of small companies doing parts of CTI: predictive dialers, OA&M software, CTI gateways, voice mail, IVRs.
  • PBX extenders for work@home (mck?)
  • Professional Services companies that design & develop call centers...some based on Lucent products.
  • Popular services were messaging and web collaboration...
  • Lucent had Merlin, Octel unified messaging, Definity Audix, SDKs, TTS cards, Speech cards, etc....
  • Microsoft itself didn't appear to be there, but the Microsoft partners were there under the Microsoft banner.
  • Cisco was there with 2600/3600 routers that handle VoIP, ATM, FrameRelay, and Video. Their AS5300s are gateways...
  • Geotel had a small booth:
    • their call-by-call router can be connected via SS7 to the network (for AT&T only).
    • X.25 and TCP/IP are available for other customers
    • They claim that Genesys is not network installed yet. They are a CPE solution.
    • Geotel connects call centers across a continent.
  • Blended Call Centers (inbound & outbound by the same operator)
  • Cellit Call Center
  • an odd vendor: the state of Florida was there enticing people to go to Florida...
    
• What I heard at the sessions...

  5-25-99: 8:30am-10:00am
  Jackie VanderBrug, Director of Business Development VIP Calling Inc.
  "Myths & Misconceptions II: updated unconventional wisdom"
  They do VoIP only, Wholesale only, International only, phone-to-phone only, Cisco only (e.g., AS5300s)

  • They claim that the public internet can deliver toll quality. They connect directly on to the UUNET backbone from a Super POP. They sit down with backbone providers to understand their plans & connect to them...
  • They note that FAX is not easy.(store & forward is easy, but real time FAX is hard)
  • They use Cisco Access Path Gateways (in general, there are big gateway improvements coming in the next 6 months)
  • Assured Quality Routing(tm) 2.0. Routers check QoS & dialup a new call if route is bad...
  • Given 2.5 cents USA to London calls, arbitrage is dead.
  • the bulk of the current value over IP is voice & FAX...even though most of the bits are data
  • the old value of PBXs was due to avoiding settlement fees...(now maybe out source??)
  • VoIP will be better than circuit switching...not just latency w.r.t. QoS
  • H.323 can from Video
  • There are 4 networks:
    • AT&T: Gens Clarinet
    • IBT: proprietary
    • RSL: Ericsson
    • ?????

5-25-99: 10:10am-10:25am

What is CTI? Unified Messaging, Speech Recognition, Next Generation PBX/ACD
IP telephony is the fastest growing subset.. (Netmeeting 3.0, TAPI 3.0)
Click to dial web center

 

5-25-99: 10:25am-10:47am

Peter Alexander: Cisco

• Would you rather get 15 voice mails, or 15 e-mails? One would like to have an e-mail type interface for voice mail. The visual interface is easier to scan etc.

• Data was here first before telephony. 1791 Optical data transport...semaphores...morse key...sounder... in fact the telephone patent was an extension to the telegraph??

• Main frame telephony to Client/Server telephony.

• No shows like this 15 yrs ago...

• There is a wireless IP phone from a Cisco partner. VoIP packets to 2600 routers..to 1910 vintage phone.demoed during the talk. Someone from the audience used the wireless phone to call the speaker on stage...

 

5-25-99
Jim Courter
President IDT in N.J.

1934 Antitrust against AT&T...Jan 1998 deregulation in Europe. VoIP is big. In 5 yrs, there will be language conversion....now there is v-mail, e-mail, news, stock quotes, sports, weather, etc.. "Net 2 Phone"(tm). Money is in the minutes...been in business for 2.5 yrs.

 

5-25-99 2:15-2:45pm
David Fuller

Interactive Intelligence, Indianapolis
Call Center Marketing Manager

Call Center Technology: A potent call center combination (CTI & Internet). Your business card has at least 4 methods of contact for you... voice/fax/website/e-mail/pager/snailmail/cellphone. There are "Islands of technology, service, communications, and reporting" for example, on the reporting issue, web page hits are counted, but the path taken, or whether the problem was solved is not counted. (my note: this looks like a unified messaging talk) They want to focus on the message, not the messenger (e.g., voice/fax/etc.). Skills based routing. (idea from me: my favorite agent routing). Multimedia ACD. In the future, there may be a virtual PBX . Circuit & packet switching with a bridge between the two...

Note: he didn't really talk about CTI & the internet even though this is what the talk was about... I guess that people have vastly different ideas of what CTI/Internet means!!!

 

 

5-25-99 3:15pm

Internet Telephony:
Real Business Applications

Not just arbitrage (Cheap long distance). Voice & FAX over IP. Fax is 6.6% of PSTN minutes. 40% of phone bill is FAX for Fortune 500 companies. IP gateways...

Note: with gateways, many users don't realize that their call was over IP (note that we demonstrated this in our Blindsiders seminars 2 yrs ago)

They do lots of test IP routes & fall back on the PSTN. Just like the first speaker. IP based unified messaging to go up 9% by 2000. IP enabled call center = talk to an agent while on the web.(ref. Microsoft demo at 1996 spring Comdex) 3% increase in sales logged. Internet architected call center IVR->Click-to-Dial->NACD, Internet Call Waiting. IP broadcast for training (ref. Lucent's Infoview) Work@Home. Cyber games over the net. Andrea Electronics IP phone with host based ASR. Lucent's MMCX Multimedia Exchange Server (old tech) for multimedia conferencing.

5-25-99 3:15pm

PBXs usually have external FAX servers, IVR servers etc. Those servers have been merged into one CTI server that is external to the PBX. They can be connected by a link such as ASAI. There are many vendors for these CTI servers including Genesys, Cisco/Geotel, and Lucent/Mosaix. Now, the PBX and CTI server can be merged into one box.(e.g., Interactive Intelligence)

IP Convergence is a given. 1999 is the year of the apps. Opportunity abounds.

 

 

5-26-99 10:05am

Technology Marketing Corp (TMC)

1972-1982 magazine. $800M in sales Call Center Business. 10,000 major call centers in Europe (50 seats & up). 5,000 call centers in Asia & Pacific Islands. 25-33% growth. Most call centers seem to be inbound. Service idea "Hotel Call Center"...one can rent a call center for a day, a month etc.

 

5-26-99 10:25am

Zachary Taylor
Director CRM Solution, Lucent Technologies

GNP has gone up 20x in 100 yrs but it still weighs the same. (implies that most new products are information..). Convergence & Customer centric, Network Revolution, "Call Contact Center", Customer Relationship mgmt.... real word convergence..applications view. Its about customer & applications! CRM directions case studies...

Networks (Intranet/Wireless/etc.) -> enterprise-> fingertips (wireless PalmPilot w/internet)

Optical networks, lots of BW, Full Screen. It took 100yrs to get 1B lines, 10 yrs to get 2.8B lines. Demand is going up.Disruptive technologies? they get assimilated..blended in: Silicon, Packet, Wireless, Optics, 80 channel WDM. IP introduced in 1974. Browsers made it grow. Up 3 times soon. Software & Broadband core networks is key. Congestion is at fiber to the home. Telephony/IT convergence is coming. At an enterprise, there is typically two depts handling this with duplicated apps, services, mgmt, and infrastructure. TCO (Total Cost of Operations) must go down. The problem is in organizational boundaries. Cost cutting can only be done once. Need another way to be more profitable. Look at how you deal with your customers. The NY times did an experiment where it sent 20 e-mails to companies.(just asking for their address). Only 4 were answered in one day. 4 were never answered. Note that 5% are your top customers, not 20%. Most companies lose customers due to indifference. It cost less to keep a customer than to get a new one. Note: e-mail is good for left brain pause & think types (classical Bell Labs types)...implying that it may be best to use these types to staff e-mail call centers...to match what e-mailing customers want...

It's about customers, not technology. In general across society, customer loyalty is eroding. Example of Jeeps in his neighborhood...over 50% turn over on next purchase. we spend too much (8x) for new customers where we should spend more in retention. A 1% increase in retention results in 25-30% increase in profits.

Products: Internet Call Server, IP telephony to Asia, Network Management... IP networked Messaging, Converged Network Mgmt to decrease TCO.

 

5-26-99 11:00am-11:33am
Schiefer: VP Seimens
Call Centers & CTI Solutions

European culture doesn't like outbound call centers (law prohibits it...) (my view is that Americans don't like them either..hence the popularity of services like privacy manager) Convergence is big.  Convergence drivers are economics, technology, and cultural forces. Technical requirements (5 nines, QoS, Security, Flexible BW, Integrated Apps, Open Standards,...solutions can get very complex. Decrease cost, not cut cost. E-commerce is a great buzz word now...e-mails sent out example. Teleworking. If we can cut the commute time down 1.5 hrs/day/person, we can get a 50% productivity increase. Would like to get rid of the cubicle/chickenbox/prisoncell treat workers better, customer satisfaction goes up, revenue goes up...but it is not free. would like to move from transaction centric ACD Call Centers with Screen Pops and low trained people...to Customer Relationship Management Centers. Right now, there is very little back office support for e-mail & web page ads...e-mail is sent to someone's PC who is on vacation...the customer then goes to your biggest competitor. "I like the personal touch". They know me, they know what I bought last, they know my order status. My idea: trained staff and/or Computer IPAs. It's not about technology, It's about delivering solutions.

5-26-99 2:30pm

IP telephony was first Computer-to-Computer (nerd-to-nerd)...then moved to computer-to-phone (nerd-to-grandma) using a gateway... then to gateway-to-gateway (grandma-to-grandma). The last case is big. It is the first time we give IP telephony benefits to people without computers. Half of the people don't even have phones! (ref. Blindsiders social trends seminar). accounting rates issue. Arbitrage is about over. Expect IP everywhere (ATM & Frame in parts). Amazon.com in Seattle trumped Barnes & Nobles without needing buy physical space outside of Seattle! Changes business models. Internet pricing is by access. One can route around internet congestion. Use the PSTN as overflow (heard this concept 3 times at the show.

 

Anthony Clark