To enable agents to answer these questions, you either provide them with high-level training or you refer customers to experts. A similar process occurs when you decide that you need to add new systems, enhance your existing systems or adapt your call center to serve on-line customers. Your company may not possess enough in-house expertise to assess your needs and requirements and your IT department may not have the time or resources to assist you. An independent, experienced and professional systems integrator can help you determine the technical needs of your call center and it can help you select, install, test and support products to meet these needs. The more complex the product you're looking for, the more you need objective systems integrators to help you select reliable systems from qualified vendors.
Systems integrators are like personal shoppers.
In addition to making sure that the new systems you plan to install can work well by themselves, they also verify whether the new systems are compatible with other components of your call center. We've found no matter how much lab testing you do, a production environment sometimes causes unusual situations that were never thought of in the test environment. When routing used to be only in the switch, it was easy to design, Vilsoet says. Now, with IVR and computer telephony middleware assisting in routing decisions because of access into the customer databases, the design logic has to take into consideration more components than before. And you have to account for backup routing when components are unavailable.