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Strategic VoIP: Coming to Your Business in 2010?
Business Intelligence and analytics, CRM and salesforce and marketing automation solution deployments frequently make good use of information generated by users of collaboration tools such as e-mail and document sharing. But the most pervasive communications and collaboration tool in business is still arguably the telephone. So how will your business (or your clients' businesses) make more effective and strategic use of the information generated by their VoIP systems and users in 2010 and beyond?
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4 Answers
Utilizing the metrics and information gathered by disparate communication systems is the holy grail of CRM & collaboration tools. So many people think just because they use a VoIP system, they can use these tools. That is a myth propagated by many vendors in this space.
The reality is that in order to integrate with tools like IM, CRM, collaboration, conferencing, presence, email and workforce management, a VoIP system needs to be built on a reliable platform with open standards. SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) is the first protocol to gain some traction in this cross-pollination of technologies; it is also the most mature. If everybody held to the SIP standard with 100% compliance, there would still be integration issues, but they would be easier to overcome. The problem is that if everybody only did only what the SIP standard required, there would be no competitive advantage of one technology vendor over another. It would also stifle advancement because one governing body would be controlling all feature sets for all vendors.
According to most third party research, there are only a few VoIP vendors that have over 80% compliance to the standard. In an open, competitive market, 90% compliance is probably about as good as it's going to get. That 90% will allow companies to integrate most functions "relatively" easy. But with some industry leaders at less than 30% compliance, users are going to begin realizing they can't do what they want to.
Once companies can integrate these systems, they can use these metrics to make MUCH more intelligent decisions about customer service, sales opportunities, staffing levels, and customer interactions. Used properly, that data will define the new Gold Service of company effectiveness.
What would be the correct question to ask to get the true answer from the Vendor about How in complaince they are with SIP ?
The system must support the SIP standard. ( http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt )
We sell several VOIP solutions, but only 2 are 100% SIP compliant. One in particular is extremely flexible in how it interfaces with 3rd party SIP devices and software. CRM, voice recording, call center management, and normal operations are excellent with this platform.
I have two comments pertaining to this discussion thread. The first is regarding some of the prior comments about the SIP "standard." As correctly cited by Mr. Brock, what we call a "standard" is actually an RFC (Request for Comments) that is developed by an IETF working group. When people stop commenting and start implementing based on an RFC, they become de facto standards but should not be confused with the more stringent standards propagated by the ITU and others. RFCs in general and the SIP-related RFCs specifically (There are many) are written to cast as wide a net possible by the many organizations that participated in the drafting of the document. This does not make them bad but it does mean that there is considerable room for interpretation. It is this latitude that has lead to the SIP Forum and others stressing interoperability testing. Some vendors may believe that they are fully or mostly compliant with the RFCs but it is only when real implementation occurs that potential conflicts are identified and resolved. Others may choose to disregard some or all of an RFC in deference to their own proprietary approaches.
Now regarding the question of what can be done to utilize information generated by a VoIP system in a more effective and strategic manner, we need to identify output that can be of potential value. VoIP systems - IP PBX systems, SIP trunking, et al - can generate information on the number of calls generated or received by specific stations or trunks, average length of call, calls in queue, average length of wait, and so forth. This information can tell management a great deal. For example, incoming calls to a toll-free number can be analyzed to determine where they originated (or at least, the telephone numbers of origination). This can be used to determine the effectiveness of an advertising campaign and to further fine-tune messages for those audiences. It is also possible to consider replacing high volume points of origination with DID (Direct Inward Dialing) numbers rather than toll-free to lower costs. For example, a large volume of calls to our TF were from the Los Angeles area. For our next campaign, we publish a 310 number that terminates in our IP PBX in Chicago in addition to the TF and reduce our costs. The bottom line is that information is empowering. We need to identify what information is now available to us as a result of VoIP systems and use that information to our strategic advantage.
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