Business needs more flexibility and lower cost of entry. Nowhere is this more true than in call centers, the factories of the service economy. Because call centers are where the money gets made, they've benefited from enthusiastic investment in computer telephony infrastructure, facilities, and other overhead. Centralization makes you vulnerable to local staff shortages, turnover, natural disasters, and the like. And it makes you slow to respond to business challenges, such as rapid growth or internationalization.
Different products tackle different aspects of the centralization problem.
There are even completely virtual ACD systems that eliminate all up-front infrastructure investment. Vocaltec's new Internet ACD is aimed at ItSPs, CLECs and other service providers, who'll offer ACD services as a package with other forms of voice and data connectivity. Synchrony runs its own electronic relationship management system as a service. New programming frameworks, like Microsoft's COM Components or Sun's Java Beans, have allowed matching data applications to replicate themselves to remote agents through Web interfaces. Herewith, an examination of several main players in the virtual ACD market.