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Comparisons of OCS in the Contact Center

NoJitter reader Kevin noted that Aspect is by no means the first to integrate Microsoft Live/Office Communications Server with its contact center solution. Mitel has in fact been doing this for a while. It's a great point, so I spoke with both Mitel and Aspect about what contact center integration with OCS means to them.

NoJitter reader Kevin noted that Aspect is by no means the first to integrate Microsoft Live/Office Communications Server with its contact center solution. Mitel has in fact been doing this for a while. It's a great point, so I spoke with both Mitel and Aspect about what contact center integration with OCS means to them.Thomas Chamberlain, marketing director at Aspect, painted a rather fascinating picture of an agent seeking help from a subject matter expert outside the contact center. The agent would have the same user interface as always, using it to tell the system that he is now needs to communicate with the expert. Backend software would interface with OCS servers outside the contact center to determine the availability of the experts as indicated by their presence state, open slots in their Outlook calendar, and rules they've set up to indicate whether they are in fact available to support the contact center at that particular moment. If the integrated Aspect-Microsoft solution determines the expert is unavailable, it checks on others until an available one is found and put into contact with the agent.

This is rather different from what Mitel is now delivering with its LCS (and upcoming OCS) integration with its contact center software. According to Kevin Johnson, director of product marketing, agents deploying the integrated Mitel-Microsoft contact center technology run Office Communicator clients directly on their desktops. Buddy lists are populated with other agents, supervisors, expert agents, and people outside the contact center, letting agents contact any of these pretty much at will. The goal here would be to replace the public instant messaging software (with all of its security and compliance issues) that is being spontaneously deployed in contact center environments by agents and supervisors.

Granted, both of the above descriptions are superficial in the extreme and do not represent the full array of capabilities Aspect is developing and Mitel and Siemens are delivering. But I think they provide a worthwhile comparison of the very different ways Microsoft and IBM unified communications software is set to impact contact center operations.