What is HCC?The Gen-i Hosted Contact Centre (HCC) is an integration of the Telecom Intelligent Network (I.N.) and the Cisco Unified Contact Centre Hosted (UCCH) solution. This solution is made up of the Cisco Intelligent Contact Manager Hosted (NICM) for ACD functionality, Cisco CallManager for PBX functionality and Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal for queuing platform, IPIVR functionality and ACD Queue Treatments. The NICM handles queuing and routing based on agent availability, collection of statistics, agent log on/off, supervisor functions, integration to the Telecom IN and more. HCC runs on separate server clusters that connectto the distributed Cisco CallManager server clusters.
How does it differ from Cisco IPCC Express?The Cisco IPCC Express is targeted to the small to mid market contact centres and is designed to support standalone call centres of up to 300 agents. However it does not offer extensive failover or redundancy and does not support integrated web collaboration. HCC offers Pre Routing which enables your contact centre manager to apply the skills based routing rules to the TollFree calls in the Telecom Network before the call is delivered to the site. IPCC Express does not offer pre routing. HCC will scale from tens to thousands of seats. It can be deployed in a single or multi-site environment with or without web collaboration e-mail management and outbound.
What components make up the HCC solution?The solution is made up of:Skills Based Routing Engine: Cisco Intelligent Contact Manager (NICM). IP-PBX: Cisco CallManager. Queuing/Self Service Platform: Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP), as well as optional integration other platforms such as Cisco IP-IVR & Nortel’s MPS range of IP-IVRs. Desktop: Cisco CTI OS Toolkit, CallBarMap Desktop tool or standard & custom CRM Integrations. Site based trunking – this is normally PRA Lite (or standard PRA) and is billed separately from the HCC rental.Can HCC work with our existing ACD until we are ready to move everyone to IP?Through its NICM component, Gen-i's HCC can integrate with a number of legacy systems to provide a smooth migration strategy to IP.
Can HCC work with multiple call/centre centre locations?Yes. The Gen-i HCC is designed for implementation in both single-site and multi-site contact centres. It utilises your existing IP network (usually Cisco), allowing you to leverage your wide-area network infrastructure, achieve lower administrative expenses and extend the boundaries of your contact centre enterprise to include branch offices, home agents, and knowledge workers. Whether you are expanding an existing operation or establishing your first contact centre, Cisco HCC can help you realise the cost and performance benefits of converged networking. HCC will always be upgraded to new software and hardware releases as they become available.
Can HCC integrate with our CRM package?If you currently use popular commercially-available CRM packages, Cisco offers standard integrations that CTI-enable the CRM applications. The CTI-enabled CRM application makes use of Cisco CTI technology under the covers to provide integration between the CRM application and telephony components. Current partnerships and pre-integrations include support for Siebel, Oracle, E.piphany, and SAP. Custom integration to other solutions (for example, Clarify) is also available.
Does the HCC integrate with recording applications, work force management, display boards or other Call/Contact Centre products?HCC has an extensive list of Eco-System partners who provide applications such as these. These partners have gone through formal testing with Gen-i for our Contact Centre offerings so you can be confident that they will work in your environment. Real-time and historical data can be sourced from the HCC database engine.
How does HCC Enterprise handle redundancy?Gen-i's HCC software components and external application links provide carrier-class, distributed fault tolerance at both the hardware and software levels, with real-time application failover capabilities. Self-diagnostic and self-healing features allow the system to automatically take advantage of redundant components when required; the system is resilient to hardware component failures, communications network failures, and asynchronous software errors. Gen-i’s HCC software also includes a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) feed which is integrated into our Network Operations Centre for alarm & fault management system. In addition we have application developments such as the ICM Email Alerts solution that can send Email alerts to people that require notification on events.
Do we need to go to multiple servers to administer HCC?No you don’t need multiple servers to administer HCC. Centralised management and control is a key benefit. The administrative workstation is the user interface into the HCC environment, enabling system managers, administrators, and supervisors to define, modify, or view routing scripts; manage the system configuration; monitor contact centre performance; define and request reports; and ensure system security. This one user interface provides enterprise-wide control across the single or multi-site contact centre. In addition, streamlined multi-channel administration allows your managers to set up a HCC agent once through a single user interface. The intuitive, user-friendly interface also allows your agents to be set up to handle voice, (and optional Web, chat, and e-mail) contacts, depending on their assigned skill sets.
Does HCC have a "Universal Queue?"Yes HCC provides a state of the art VoIP contact centre solution that allows you to seamlessly integrate inbound and outbound voice applications with Internet applications including real-time chat, Web collaboration and e-mail. This integration allows for unified capabilities, enabling a single agent to support multiple interactions simultaneously regardless of the communications channel your customer has chosen. Since each interaction is unique and may require individualized service, Gen-i provides contact centre solutions to manage each interaction based on virtually any contact attribute.