We've all heard the telecom industry's marketing pitch: Voice over IP (VoIP) will change telephony as we know it, sentencing plain old "circuit-switched" technology to the technology dustbin. Voice over IP, say its backers, offers big advantages over circuit-switched calls: toll savings; enhanced services such as unified communications; simplified moves, adds and changes (MACs); and seamless Internet working with the local area network.

Alas, VoIP isn't yet widely accepted among call centers. The transition, notes Bob Hafner, the vice president of GartnerGroup, a Stamford, CT-based consulting firm, is proceeding "more as a trickle than a flood." He says call center managers aren't rushing to create IP-only centers because they've already invested considerable time and money in circuit-switched phone systems. And rightly so, he adds.

"The endgame is definitely IP, but the issue here is to not get lost in the hype," says Hafner. "You need to keep your business hat on and ask yourself, 'Why am I doing this?'"

Expect many call center managers to hang on to their phone switches for now. A large percentage of the huge installed-base of call centers will favor beefing up existing switches until IP telephony becomes more compelling.

"The question is when will somebody come out with a killer feature that forces everybody to say, 'We have to move to this technology right away because I can't do this on a circuit-switched platform,'" says Hafner.

Tom Esch, president of Kent Technologies, agrees that most call centers will gradually transition to IP telephony. Kent Technologies is a Tampa, FL-based consulting firm with clients that include a roster of Fortune 100 companies. Although these firms have the financial resources to replace their phone switches with IP systems, Esch advises against that. "My recommendation would be that any new call center should go to a completely IP-based system," he says. "But if you have a relatively new PBX and you've [made] a significant investment in that, your position should be to at least leverage it to some extent."

Esch is optimistic that Voice over IP will inevitably become popular among call centers because it can dramatically reduce overhead costs. He estimates that pricing for a national circuit-switched phone call averages between four to six cents per minute, depending on the carrier. By converting calls from circuit-switched to packet-switched data, says Esch, you can cut toll costs to less than 5% of what you pay for routing calls through the public switched telephone network (PSTN). "Extrapolate that savings using the much higher international toll cost and the numbers can be staggering," he says.

Kent Technologies isn't the only consultancy to predict the gradual but certain acceptance of Voice over IP among call centers. International Data Corporation (IDC), a Framingham, MA-based market research firm, predicts that call centers will purchase 30% of all Voice-over-IP products in the next two years. What follows are products that can help you bring IP telephony to your call center.

VoIP-Enabling Software

One option for kick-starting IP in your call center is to connect your switch to a server running IP software. That lets you route circuit-switched calls to agents' extensions and packet-switched calls to their PCs. If you later decide to become an all-IP center, simply replace the phone switch with the server.

Aspect Communications (San Jose, CA) offers Enterprise Contact Server, which can work with your phone switch, and Aspect IP Contact Suite, which enables you to create an IP-only call center.

"We see our customers falling into two categories," says Neil Kennedy, director of product management for Aspect Communications. "The first kind has an existing infrastructure and wants a Voice-over-IP solution that works with it, and the other kind [is] introducing a new business unit from the ground up."

Kennedy says that some companies already use IP gateways with their phone switches and with other vendors' software to route messages from different media to agents. But he notes this isn't the most convenient approach.

"A typical hybrid IP/PBX solution comprises a PBX that works with separate software for screen pops, [text] chat, collaborative browsing and e-mail," says Kennedy. "But when you add agents, you need to add them to all of those components."

Enterprise Contact Server and Aspect IP Contact Suite let you set routing rules and business processes from one screen. The first is an upgraded version of Aspect Contact Server, software that provides screen pops containing customer information to agents. You can integrate Aspect Contact Server with other vendors' software to route phone calls, e-mail messages and text chat requests to agents by writing application programming interfaces (API). The server enables you to assign agents to skill groups. And it lets agents respond to phone calls and on-line messages from a universal queue.

Kennedy says the server's VoIP routing capability depends on your phone switch. You need to connect an IP gateway to your switch to decompress packet-switched calls into circuit-switched calls. Enterprise Contact Server can then route calls from your switch to agents. In addition to cutting long-distance charges, the server lets you avoid purchasing headsets or softphones.

Aspect IP Contact Suite dispenses with the PBX, enabling agents to answer voice-over-IP calls using H.323- or Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP)-compliant softphones. You can also connect the server running the software to your switch through a T-1 trunk to permit circuit-switched and packet-switched calls. The Agent Contact Desktop module lets agents hold, transfer and conference both types of calls. The Aspect Web Chat and Aspect Web Share modules enable them to participate in text chat sessions and co-browse the Web with customers, respectively.

The Aspect Resource Manager module lets you define skill sets and assign skills to agents by selecting options from a menu. You can enter your user ID and password to use the module through a Web browser. And you can view real-time and historical reports detailing, say, how much time agents spend answering calls and e-mail messages. Aspect IP Contact Suite, which runs on a Windows 2000 server, accommodates from 10 to 70 agents. The suite lists for $5,690 per seat.

Erik Laurence, vice president of marketing and business development for CosmoCom (Hauppauge, NY), concedes that IP telephony made an inauspicious debut among call centers.

"Voice over IP got a bad reputation initially because the original voice-over-IP [products] were PCs [connected] over the Internet," he says. "If you try to run voice over the unmanaged environment of the Internet, the results are iffy. When you run voice over a managed IP network, the results are total audio quality."

By creating private or managed IP networks, says Laurence, call centers can minimize factors - packet delay, jitter and loss - that reduce VoIP quality of service (QoS). He expects that most call centers will transition to IP-only systems by the end of the decade.

We've all heard the telecom industry's marketing pitch: Voice over IP (VoIP) will change telephony as we know it, sentencing plain old "circuit-switched" technology to the technology dustbin. Voice over IP, say its backers, offers big advantages over circuit-switched calls: toll savings; enhanced services such as unified communications; simplified moves, adds and changes (MACs); and seamless Internet working with the local area network.

Alas, VoIP isn't yet widely accepted among call centers. The transition, notes Bob Hafner, the vice president of GartnerGroup, a Stamford, CT-based consulting firm, is proceeding "more as a trickle than a flood." He says call center managers aren't rushing to create IP-only centers because they've already invested considerable time and money in circuit-switched phone systems. And rightly so, he adds.

"The endgame is definitely IP, but the issue here is to not get lost in the hype," says Hafner. "You need to keep your business hat on and ask yourself, 'Why am I doing this?'"

Expect many call center managers to hang on to their phone switches for now. A large percentage of the huge installed-base of call centers will favor beefing up existing switches until IP telephony becomes more compelling.

"The question is when will somebody come out with a killer feature that forces everybody to say, 'We have to move to this technology right away because I can't do this on a circuit-switched platform,'" says Hafner.

Tom Esch, president of Kent Technologies, agrees that most call centers will gradually transition to IP telephony. Kent Technologies is a Tampa, FL-based consulting firm with clients that include a roster of Fortune 100 companies. Although these firms have the financial resources to replace their phone switches with IP systems, Esch advises against that. "My recommendation would be that any new call center should go to a completely IP-based system," he says. "But if you have a relatively new PBX and you've made a significant investment in that, your position should be to at least leverage it to some extent."

Esch is optimistic that Voice over IP will inevitably become popular among call centers because it can dramatically reduce overhead costs. He estimates that pricing for a national circuit-switched phone call averages between four to six cents per minute, depending on the carrier. By converting calls from circuit-switched to packet-switched data, says Esch, you can cut toll costs to less than 5% of what you pay for routing calls through the public switched telephone network (PSTN). "Extrapolate that savings using the much higher international toll cost and the numbers can be staggering," he says.

Kent Technologies isn't the only consultancy to predict the gradual but certain acceptance of Voice over IP among call centers. International Data Corporation (IDC), a Framingham, MA-based market research firm, predicts that call centers will purchase 30% of all Voice-over-IP products in the next two years. What follows are products that can help you bring IP telephony to your call center.

VoIP-Enabling Software

One option for kick-starting IP in your call center is to connect your switch to a server running IP software. That lets you route circuit-switched calls to agents' extensions and packet-switched calls to their PCs. If you later decide to become an all-IP center, simply replace the phone switch with the server.

Aspect Communications (San Jose, CA) offers Enterprise Contact Server, which can work with your phone switch, and Aspect IP Contact Suite, which enables you to create an IP-only call center.

"We see our customers falling into two categories," says Neil Kennedy, director of product management for Aspect Communications. "The first kind has an existing infrastructure and wants a Voice-over-IP solution that works with it, and the other kind is introducing a new business unit from the ground up."

Kennedy says that some companies already use IP gateways with their phone switches and with other vendors' software to route messages from different media to agents. But he notes this isn't the most convenient approach.

"A typical hybrid IP/PBX solution comprises a PBX that works with separate software for screen pops, text chat, collaborative browsing and e-mail," says Kennedy. "But when you add agents, you need to add them to all of those components."

Enterprise Contact Server and Aspect IP Contact Suite let you set routing rules and business processes from one screen. The first is an upgraded version of Aspect Contact Server, software that provides screen pops containing customer information to agents. You can integrate Aspect Contact Server with other vendors' software to route phone calls, e-mail messages and text chat requests to agents by writing application programming interfaces (API). The server enables you to assign agents to skill groups. And it lets agents respond to phone calls and on-line messages from a universal queue.

Kennedy says the server's VoIP routing capability depends on your phone switch. You need to connect an IP gateway to your switch to decompress packet-switched calls into circuit-switched calls. Enterprise Contact Server can then route calls from your switch to agents. In addition to cutting long-distance charges, the server lets you avoid purchasing headsets or softphones.

Aspect IP Contact Suite dispenses with the PBX, enabling agents to answer voice-over-IP calls using H.323- or Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP)-compliant softphones. You can also connect the server running the software to your switch through a T-1 trunk to permit circuit-switched and packet-switched calls. The Agent Contact Desktop module lets agents hold, transfer and conference both types of calls. The Aspect Web Chat and Aspect Web Share modules enable them to participate in text chat sessions and co-browse the Web with customers, respectively.

The Aspect Resource Manager module lets you define skill sets and assign skills to agents by selecting options from a menu. You can enter your user ID and password to use the module through a Web browser. And you can view real-time and historical reports detailing, say, how much time agents spend answering calls and e-mail messages. Aspect IP Contact Suite, which runs on a Windows 2000 server, accommodates from 10 to 70 agents. The suite lists for $5,690 per seat.

Erik Laurence, vice president of marketing and business development for CosmoCom (Hauppauge, NY), concedes that IP telephony made an inauspicious debut among call centers.

"Voice over IP got a bad reputation initially because the original voice-over-IP products were PCs connected over the Internet," he says. "If you try to run voice over the unmanaged environment of the Internet, the results are iffy. When you run voice over a managed IP network, the results are total audio quality."

By creating private or managed IP networks, says Laurence, call centers can minimize factors - packet delay, jitter and loss - that reduce VoIP quality of service (QoS). He expects that most call centers will transition to IP-only systems by the end of the decade.