Unified Agent Desktops Connect Reps to Essential Apps

To help with the effort, newer systems come with a decision engine that can sift through the customer information and determine which data is important to the agent in the context of the conversation. "Companies are swimming in data now, and many don't know what to do with it all, so you need a system that can decide what is relevant at the time," Foley says.

Experts also suggest mapping all of the end-to-end processes and defining distinct employee roles so that workspaces and task flows can be designed specifically for each profile.

Kothari recommends that companies create scripts and workflows that dictate which records the agent desktop opens and when.

And then it's important to fight the temptation to do too much at once. Doing so could clutter agents' workspaces when the real goal of a unified desktop is to show only the fields and tabs the agent needs for each situation.

"The biggest thing any company needs to do is to have a destination in mind," Foley says. "Identify where you want to be three years from now, and then you can get started and make changes over time to get you there."

Keep in mind, though, that these systems are not without costs. "It's not always a low-impact purchasing decision," Jacobs warns. "When [the company's business processes] change, the orchestration must change. This means companies need to have the appropriate technical resources available for the care and feeding of such a system."

And that care and feeding has to be an ongoing effort. Data has to be accurate and up-to-date, not only in the contact center system but in all of the other systems that it touches.

"An integrated system like this has to be up and available nearly 100 percent of the time," Leary maintains. "One glitch could destroy all the goodwill built from months or years of delivering great service."

THE VENDOR LANDSCAPE

Once your needs have been assessed, you're ready to evaluate the various vendor solutions. Unified agent desktop solutions have greatly matured during the past four or five years. Vendors have solidified their offerings by adding capabilities on top of their earlier foundational building blocks, integrated new channels and data sources into their systems, and expanded their integration partner ecosystems.

But for all of the advances, the market for unified agent desktop software is still very fragmented. Some vendors, such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and SAP, provide solutions that offer deep customizations, integrations, and support for very large enterprises.

Other vendors, including Amdocs, Altitude Software, Aptean, Aspect Software, Cicero, Cincom, Genesys, Jacada, inContact, Infor, LivePerson, OpenSpan, Pegasystems, SugarCRM, Touchbase, and Verint Systems, offer solutions that cater more to the midmarket.

Also adding to the complexity is the number of vendors that are now entering the market. Telephony and contact center infrastructure vendors such as Cisco Systems, Five9, 8x8, and Avaya; analytics vendors like NICE Systems; enterprise feedback management vendors such as Confirmit and Allegiance Software; and even social media management firms like Conversocial, Lithium, and Jive Software have come out with products that offer some unified agent desktop capabilities or feed into those systems seamlessly.

And then, while some vendors provide solid software capable of standardizing the agent desktop across channels and applications, others provide best-of-breed capabilities across a single channel or a handful of applications. Some work exclusively within their own environments; others incorporate technologies from other vendors.

Finding one vendor that does everything well out of the box is difficult, Fluss says.

Pegasystems' Foley agrees. Right now, he says, "it's really not possible to rely on one vendor for everything."

Senior News Editor Leonard Klie can be reached at lklie@infotoday.com.

Related Articles

At Pegaworld, Speakers Call for More Human Customer Interactions

Speakers suggest rethinking processes from the customer's perspective, and enabling authentic interactions.