Author:  Gary Barnett

The Yankee Group recently published a new study that found Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) adoption rates in call centers are expected to grow from 17% in 2005, to 47% by the end of 2007; and the VoIP penetration rate of agent seats is anticipated to rise from 16% in 2005 to more than 60% in the next three years. The study also uncovered that the use of remote agents is one of the biggest drivers for VoIP adoption.

The increasing implementation of VoIP in the contact center is only the beginning – we are headed toward an age where communications will be completely consolidated across the enterprise.  Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-enabled presence detection, which is today helping IP-based contact centers to determine if and when remote agents are online, will in the future be extended to all user agent devices that support SIP, including PDAs, cell phones, and other hand-held devices.

Customers will be able to call me in my office and, rather than receiving voicemail if I am not there, they will be automatically transferred to the best possible phone number.  My Bluetooth-enabled laptop will determine whether or not my Bluetooth-enabled cell phone is physically located in the same room, and then the IP network will route the call to the phone number where I am most likely to be reached – either my IP phone or my cell phone.

These new capabilities are exciting to me and I foresee that as computer and telephony networks continue to converge, contact center technologies will become killer applications on PBX, and “anytime, anywhere” communications will take on a whole new meaning.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 6:53 am and is filed under Contact Center Technology, VoIP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.