Call Center Solutions

WebConnection Click-to-Callback As usage of the World Wide Web grows by leaps and bounds, companies need to expand interaction capabilities with their Business Call Centers and Support Centers. The user needs to be able to initiate a request directly from the company's Web site eliminating the time-consuming use of a telephone. The Call Center has the ability to gather information on the Web on and from customers, providing a vast exploitable resource for businesses. Customers accessing a company's Web site fill in a form with information about their problems, questions, orders, or requests and then submit it. In this way, the time and effort required for a direct session with a Call Center agent is reduced or eliminated. In addition, the company is able to gather information on a customer's habits, needs and other profile data while the customer browses its Web site. The "Click-to-Callback" feature allows the user to request that an agent call back. This eliminates being "put on hold" on the telephone until an agent is available to take the call. This feature is sometime referred to as "virtual hold" because there is no actual "hold" on a real telephone line. With Callback, the agent, when available, calls the user back. Callback has the ability to schedule callbacks at a desired time optimizing efficiency of contact between the agent and the customer. The feature was implemented both as part of the IBM CallPath Enterprise solution as well as a stand-alone feature that can be used by any Call Center which has a JTAPI interface. Callback integrates Callback requests with Call Center queues by placing Callback requests on Call Center queues as regular telephone calls. It is possible to initiate a callback, both as an outbound call as well as an incoming call. This flexible implementation enables Call Centers to retain reporting statistics on Callback requests and to handle them as regular incoming calls using the following features: skill based routing. load balancing. queuing and re-queuing of calls. power dialing. other features that exist for regular calls today. Callback was integrated with IBM's Callpath Enterprise product. It can also be integrated with other Call Center products. It was developed in pure Java and uses JTAPI to queue and issue the call back. Customers, while browsing a Web site empowered by WebConnection, may need to get help, ask for support, purchase a product, or get information on products, air tickets, travel packages etc. However, they may need to first ask a question. In this case, all that is needed is to click the Callback button on the site, fill in the required information on the Callback schedule time, and personal contact information or the customer ID (if the customer has a long term relationship with the company). Then the customer clicks the Callback button to submit the request which is then queued in the Call Center. Once customers contact a company through its Web site, they can be tracked, and information on their visiting path or any data which they have filled in, is stored with the queued request. Customers are presented with a status screen that provides the status of the request in the queue (in the case of an immediate scheduled Callback). The Web site can be browsed in the meantime. For this reason, the Callback feature is also referred to as "virtual hold". When a Callback request reaches the top of the queue, either a call is initiated by the Call Center software as an outbound call from the agent to the customer, or the exploit "phantom call" feature imitates an incoming call to the agent from the customer. In an abnormal situation, an automatic E-mail message is generated to the customer requesting rescheduling and to get more information. A company can create a customized template for the E-mail message. Related links: IP Telephony and Voice Over Data Technologies . Automatic Mail Responder .