Today, that end-user still has the option to complete most transactions by speaking with an agent (though she might need the info from www.GetHuman.com to do so).  It is likely she also has various self-service options to schedule a service call including the Web or an IVR via which she can log in with her account information.  Chances are she can also send an email request (if it’s not 20 degrees below zero) or chat up an online representative.

The availability of multiple touch-points by which a customer can access your company IS a multichannel contact center solution.  It typically allows the end-user to select her preferred touch-point and yet each transaction utilizes just a single channel or method of communication at a time.  Even a chat session that results in a callback or click-to-call event uses only one channel at a time even though the contact center offers up multiple channels.  Business rules within the contact center may converge the channels into the agent workspace allowing individual cross-trained agents to handle high priority chats or emails ahead of lower-value phone calls. 

Now & Tomorrow

Enter the iPhone and the Droid, generically referred to as smartphones, and the whole game changes.
Why?  Because now multimodal happens! 

With smartphones in the consumers’ hands, the user has access to a much richer and potentially more powerful user interface than the agent.  And they know how to use it.

Add a Bluetooth headset to the smartphone and now the user can access the rest of the features of the smartphone instrument while carrying on a conversation. Now multiple channels of communication are available to the user (not just the contact center agent) during a single transaction.  When two or more channels are used during a single transaction, that’s a multimodal transaction.

Let’s go back to that service call on the furnace and see what it might look like today or tomorrow.  Suppose the issue is “…hot water’s leaking from the gizmo next to the really hot box with the flames on the bottom.”  The agent dispatcher says something like “can you snap a picture of that piece and email it to me?”

Next, as part of this multimodal transaction, the homeowner pushes the video button on her handset (or starts it with a voice command) and begins streaming video right to the agent’s desktop.  The agent says  “can you get a little closer so I can get the part number off the label?  And while you’re at it, give me a view of your furnace so I know what to put in the ticket before I dispatch the technician.”

Think about how cool and efficient this transaction is!  Think about how much more exciting it could become as users demand more and better multimodal experiences. 

Now consider this contact center transaction if the situation were a bit more mundane.  Say the temperature isn’t below freezing and our hearty Minnesota customer isn’t in a panic to get the heat turned back on.  Instead of emergency scheduling, the agent pushes a graphic schedule of open appointments to the user’s handset.  The user clicks on a day, looks for an open timeslot that jibes with her work and coaching schedules that are also stored on her smartphone, makes her selection with her index finger, and sends the appointment back to the agent with another flick of her finger.  This single transaction involves voice, video and data, all in one session.  That is multimodal. 

You are a consumer too.  Wouldn’t you like to do business with a service organization that takes the video from your service call, checks on possible part availability before your technician visits so the likely culprit parts are all packed in the van?   Would you still consider doing business with a service organization that sent out a tech to look at your furnace, figure out what part was needed and then drove off to a warehouse to check on availability of the part or had it shipped a week later?  The richer end-user experience enabled by a multimodal contact center certainly sounds better and holds great promise when it comes to answering the user’s demand for more thoughtful, efficient and personalized customer service.

Multimodal Contact Center Transactions

But what about the contact center side of that multimodal experience?

With SIP pipes added to the solution architecture and SIP extended to agent endpoints wherever they may be, multimodal contact center transactions are not just possible; they are a reality (e.g., Convergys (Intervoice) 2006, Nuance, etc.).  It requires that previously segregated and siloed content (data and information) be integrated as well as communications pipes converged.  These are new frontiers for contact center architectures and applications.  Just like the technologies that emerged previously – IVR & web self-service, speech recognition, CTI, IP telephony – these technologies too will run into some bumps in the road.

That’s where we come in.  IQ Services offers single and multi-channel testing services that can help you be confident all your customer-facing solutions work as intended under load and continue to be available 24x7 in production. Remote StressTest™ load testing and HeartBeat™ availability & performance monitoring access and interact with your solutions just like real customers trying to accomplish real things over a phone call or via the Web.  Our test equipment is easily configured to interact with your multichannel OR multimodal contact center solutions to ensure your technology is working and customer transactions are completing successfully -- whether it’s one channel at a time, or across multiple channels.

Do you want to know if an increase in voice traffic adversely affects the response time of your web self-service solution?  We’ve got a test suite for that.  We’ll configure our test equipment to generate a steady state of online traffic and then gradually ramp up the voice traffic to full load, tracking response times at every step of the way.  We can then push the traffic all the way up to full capacity.

Can your SIP pipes handle the same sudden increase in incoming traffic your old-fashioned TDM boxes handled sitting down? We’ve got a test suite for that too.  Tell us the calls per second arrival rate your equipment is supposed to handle and we’ll configure a ramp-up plan that lets you see exactly what happens.

Are you concerned about your IP-enabled process for logging in remote agents and delivering calls to them?  We can do that.  We can login in hundreds of agent workstations.  The test case can be set up to react to changes in call states as our voice testing process places and/or answers test calls in sequence.  Once the calls are connected, audio can be streamed from one end to the other and back again to ensure the proper connections are made, voice quality stays high under target load conditions, and the agent workstation keeps up with the traffic.

How about proving your converged queuing process properly elevates high-profile chat customers over so-so voice customers already in line? Yes, we can help you with that and many other multichannel and multimodal scenarios.

As the world of smartphones expands along with customer expectations for a richer end-user experience, IQ Services expands its multimodal test offerings so you can be confident the experience your customers have is the one you planned