Webex Contact Center 1.0 Data Sheet

 

Product overview

Webex^® Contact Center is an omnichannel cloud contact center solution that can transform your customers’ experience and improve your business results.

Designed and built from its foundation as a cloud solution, Webex Contact Center brings your business the innovation, flexibility, and agility of the cloud with security and scalability (Figure 1). As a cloud-based subscription, Webex Contact Center enables rapid time to market and time to new revenue while minimizing upfront capital investment.

Webex Contact Center is Software as a Service (SaaS) that offers the significant advantages of cloud delivery. With Webex Contact Center, customers can:

Maximize business outcomes by improving sales conversions, revenues, retention, customer satisfaction scores, and first contact resolutions.

Improve performance visibility across sites by centrally monitoring the business and operational performance of agents, teams, sites, systems, and outsource partners in real time.

Reduce administrative overhead by managing contact center operations and resources across geographies from a central command center in the cloud at a reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Whether you’re a new business creating your first contact center, a medium-size business looking to improve contact center operations, or a large enterprise needing visibility and control over multiple contact center sites, Webex Contact Center is a solution that can fit your needs.

A path to cloud at your pace with the Collaboration Flex Plan

Webex Contact Center is available as part of the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan, which provides an intelligent and practical path for migrating from an on-premises to cloud contact center and collaboration solutions at your own pace, with an award-winning user experience at every step.

Features and benefits

Routing and queue management

Webex Contact Center intelligently distributes calls across:

●     Teams and agents in multiple sites

●     Remote agents

Routing strategies can be created to leverage skill assignments at the team or agent level.

Agent availability and skill sets are accurately matched with customer priority, value, and needs. Agents are more productive, and customers are better served.

Webex Contact Center’s native cloud architecture—agile and secure

From a simple, user-friendly interface, supervisors can change routing strategies without knowing complex scripting languages. This allows customer organizations to maximize resources and respond quickly to changing conditions.

Modifications to routing strategies take effect immediately and can be applied to current calls in queue.

With Webex Contact Center, calls are queued in the cloud network, not on-premises based equipment. This approach provides substantial savings in telecom hardware, toll charges, and bandwidth. The ability to centrally manage contact center resources on a global level eliminates variances in queue times among sites and lowers administration expenses.

Routing type options

Webex Contact Center offers a full range routing options to serve a variety of contact center needs.

Routing options include:

Skills-based routing: This helps contact centers manage agent skill sets at a granular level to optimize call routing strategies. Agents can be assigned multiple skills and skill types based on their proficiencies. Agents’ skills can be defined as:

●     A proficiency score of 1 to 10

●     A “true” or “false” value

●     A predefined value

●     Free-form text

Longest available agent routing: Incoming contacts get directed to the agent who has been available for the longest time.

Capacity-based team routing: Allows routing of calls to phone numbers, without requiring agents to sign on to the system. This is effective when the people taking the call are not traditional call center agents or the calls may be answered by voicemail, answering machines, or hunt groups.

The capacity-based team does not have specific agents assigned to it, and the agents do not use the Webex Contact Center agent desktop. A capacity-based team might be used to represent a voice mailbox or an agent group that is not managed by the Webex Contact Center system. The capacity of such teams is determined by the capacity setting, which can be overwritten by team capacity strategies defined in the routing strategy module.

Load balance routing: Incoming contacts get distributed among a group of teams based on ratios specified in the strategy.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)

Webex Contact Center provides a web-based portal for the configuration, management, and reporting of the ACD. Access rights are restricted by user login, so customer administrators or supervisors can only manage the sites for which they are responsible.

Callers are provided with queue positions and expected wait times based on average speed of answer via a standard, complementary professional services-provided script.

Webex Contact Center offers the ability to “overflow” call queues, based on skill set, to agents that have a lower level skill set than the primary target agent. The routing module in the dashboard allows users the ability to designate how calls are distributed to agents.

Overflow call queues can cascade through groups made up of a single team or multiple teams and can include specific skill requirements. If a threshold is exceeded, then the calls can be routed to an overflow queue where they can be prioritized for more specialized call handling. Thresholds can be adjusted at any time. There is no hard limit to the number of skills that can be assigned to an agent.

Agents can be made automatically available after a call, go unavailable, or have a set break between calls.

Agents can be configured to have manual wrap-up time or auto wrap-up time:

●     In manual wrap-up, the agent receives a period of time determined by the administrator to complete their after-call wrap-up. This can be extended by the agent if the administrator enables this capability.

●     In auto wrap-up, the agent will be immediately available after the call. If the agent needs to go offline for a meeting, training, or lunch break, the agent can change his/her status to an idle state. No communications are routed to the agent in the idle state.

●     If an agent, for whatever reason, fails to answer a call routed to them, the call is immediately taken back and rerouted to another available agent (“Redirect on No Answer”, or RONA). To avoid sending additional calls to a non-responsive agent, the non-responding agent is put into an unavailable state and must toggle their status back to an active state in to resume taking calls.

Disposition codes (wrap-up codes)

Administrators can create disposition codes (wrap-up codes) that can track the reason for a call’s end and the reason for agent inactivity (idle codes).

The idle reason codes can be for any non-contact-related agent activity. They allow supervisors to track agent availability in detail.

There are specific reports—called auxiliary code reports—that track idle codes and wrap-up codes.

Callback options

Webex Contact Center offers callback from queue and voicemail functionality. When the queue reaches a specific predetermined point, callers can be offered the option to leave their phone number for a callback, or they may leave a voicemail, rather than waiting in queue.

Via a paid professional services engagement, Webex Contact Center can offer web-based callback that enables visitors to a customer’s website to request that the contact center call them back on a customer-provided phone number. Webex Contact Center’s routing engine will process the callback request by identifying the most appropriate agent and connecting that agent with the customer.

Agent greeting

With professional services support, Webex Contact Center can be set to play a configurable, automated agent greeting to callers, standardizing the caller experience. The greeting helps keep the agent voices fresh because they do not have to repeat the same greeting in every call.

Agent desktop

Agent desktop features include:

●     Support for voice, email, and chat channels

●     Enhanced screen-pop user experience to improve agent productivity

●     Agent performance statistics for agents to assess performance during the course of the day

●     Customized agent activity grids to separate inbound and outbound calls

Remote agent support

Webex Contact Center uses existing endpoints for call delivery. These endpoints can be:

●     PSTN phones

●     Cell phones

With Webex Contact Center, all agents are essentially remote agents, and have the exact same capabilities regardless of endpoints. All Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) features work the same for all agents, whether they are local or remote and regardless of the telephony endpoint. Supervisors can continue to monitor and record calls handled by agents, whether remote or in office. The only equipment required is:

●     A PC with a broadband connection

●     A supported browser

●     An addressable phone number

Built-in disaster recovery

Businesses can seamlessly redirect call center traffic during unexpected emergencies such as natural disasters, transport facility outages, or other power disruptions.

A phone, computer, and Internet connectivity are all the equipment agents need to be productive anywhere.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

The solution simplifies login and password management for agents and supervisors and allows them to log in a single time for access to all Webex Contact Center applications.

All Webex Contact Center applications are integrated with the default Webex Control Hub identity service. This allows partners and customer to SSO into any contact center application using their Control Hub credentials.

In addition to using the built-in identity service of Control Hub, a customer can redirect the authentication request to their organization’s common identity provider (IdP). This feature requires the IdP to confirm to Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 with certain additional configuration requirements. A list of tested SSO IdPs and high-level steps to validate other IdP services is provided here.

Webex Control Hub

Webex Contact Center is integrated with Webex Control Hub to:

●     Provide a unified administration experience for all Cisco Webex collaboration services, including Meetings, Calling, Teams, and Contact Center

●     Allow a simplified user onboarding experience for one or many Webex collaboration services through a single interface

●     Control entitlements, security, and compliance

For customer administrators, Webex Control Hub provides a web-based interface for:

●     Managing your organization

●     Managing your users

●     Assigning services

For partner administrators, Webex Control Hub is the central point for all provisioning and ordering services for end customers. In Webex Control Hub, you can:

●     Add new customer organizations as managed organizations for your partner organization

●     View all your customer organizations

●     Access customer organizations for administrative activities

Webex Control Hub cross-launches into the Webex Contact Center Management Portal, providing ease of use through a single login.

Management Portal

The Webex Contact Center Management Portal provides administrators and supervisors with web-based tools for real-time, end-to-end management and administration of their contact centers. Users can:

●     Set up flexible routing strategies and call flows

●     Assign multi-skilled agent to queues

●     Monitor performance in real time via dashboards and call monitoring

●     Access historical reporting and analytics to track customer trends

Supervisory features (call monitoring, coaching, and barge-in)

Supervisory features, including monitoring, coaching, and barge-in, are Premium Agent license features.

Supervisors can use the real-time dashboard to view the latest contact and agent states.

A web-based dashboard provides a centralized point to manage and monitor calls and multimedia contacts. Supervisors have a real-time view of call volumes and agent activity across all sites, networks, and technologies. Call center managers have the tools and information to measure and manage distributed contact center operations in real time.

Queue status and contacts waiting in the queue are displayed on the supervisor interface in real time.

The call monitoring feature allows supervisors to access calls for the teams they manage and to listen in on conversations, either from the corporate network or through a remote dial-in connection. This can be done without the caller or agent knowing. The supervisor can coach or barge into the call at any time. If required, the supervisor can coach the agent on the conversation privately or create a three-way conference to join an ongoing conversation.

●     The call monitoring application supports several flexible options to provide the flexibility that supervisors need. Monitoring can be done on a continuous, one-time, or scheduled basis.

●     A combination of one or more queues, sites, teams, and agents can be provided to create a monitoring schedule or supervisors can choose to monitor a session in real time.

Supervisors also can change an agent’s skill profile in real time. This capability gives supervisors tactical tools to manage their agent teams and support contact center management objectives.

Call recording

The call recording module enables authorized users to record calls and create recording schedules.

The call recording application allows supervisors or administrators to decide the recording schedule for each queue.

●     Recording can be restricted at the site, team, and agent level and includes the flexibility of deciding whether all or only a percentage of total calls will be recorded.

●     The recording schedule also provides an option to allow agents to pause recording for a specific duration when sensitive information is to be shared.

The recording management feature is a jukebox like application that allows supervisors access to call recordings that can be filtered by queues, sites, teams, and agents.

●     This application also allows call recording to be tagged using business-specific labels that significantly reduces access times.

●     The application has an advanced search option that allows search of call recordings for CAD variables, call attributes such as Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS), Automatic Number Identification (ANI), session ID, recording duration, and custom attributes.

Users can choose between two different audio recording options: compliance call logging or percentage call recording.

Compliance call logging records all calls that are served by a given queue. This setting is useful for customers who require 100% recording for compliance purposes.

Percentage call recording enables customers to record a subset of their calls. This allows administrators to spot check call quality across the enterprise or perform targeted quality monitoring of certain agents, teams, or call center sites. Calls to be recorded can be:

●     Selected randomly by the system on a percentage basis.

●     Scheduled by time and/or day.

●     Based upon criteria such as the site, team, or agent to whom the call is routed.

Recordings are stored on the recordings portal that provides archival and retrieval of call recordings.

Music on hold

Music and messaging are recorded and saved as a .wav file. This file is then uploaded to Webex Contact Center and is available for use in any queue configured on the platform.

New recordings can be uploaded from the web-based dashboard at any time and made available to callers in near-real time.

Email capabilities

Email capabilities are included with Premium Agent seats only.

The subject line of emails is scanned for business specific keywords to decide the skill group or queue to which they need to be routed.

Once they are placed inside a queue, the work distribution engine assigns them to available agents based on the queuing algorithm selected in the system.

The agents can respond to emails with a standard email response template with full visibility on the past interactions of that customer.

Webex Contact Center email capabilities include:

●     Pulling emails from multiple email accounts (Gmail and Office 365 over secure channels)

●     Providing templates with greetings and signatures

●     Routing emails based on subject line keyword analysis

●     An email editor with rich text capabilities

●     Support for attachments with configurable limits

●     Multi-session support for email contacts

●     Reporting on emails in Analyzer

●     Providing conversation groupings and history

●     Wrap-up codes

●     Audible indicators for new email arrival

Chat capabilities

Chat capabilities are included with Premium Agent seats only.

Chat uses the Webex Teams^™ messaging infrastructure to communicate between the customer and agent.

Customers may connect with an agent via a chat bubble on the customer website.

Customers can select a reason for interaction from a drop-down menu. The selection reason is used to route the customer interaction to the appropriate queue.

Chat interactions are assigned to an agent based on the configured routing strategy, for instance “longest available agent”.

Webex Contact Center web chat capabilities include:

●     Secure chat

●     Routing treatment based on chat reasons and queue position

●     Self-serve chat template creation using an intuitive wizard

●     Branding of the chat bubble

●     Proactive chat

●     Integration with customer virtual assistant (bots) using Google AI

●     Support for transfer of attachments and URLs in chat

●     Responding with configurable canned responses

●     Blind/consult transferring and conferencing with another agent or supervisor

●     Customers can download a chat transcript

●     Customers can submit Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys

●     An agent can participate in multi-session chat

●     Reporting on chats in Analyzer

●     Wrap-up code for chats

●     Audible indicator for new chat

●     Customer interaction history

If needed, an agent can transfer a chat to another representative or subject matter expert by using the transfer button on the chat page. The agent is presented with a list of queues and can select an available agent within the queue for transfer. The new agent will receive all the previous chat information as well as any internal notes left by the first agent.

Self-service Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Webex Contact Center offers both touch-tone (dual-tone multi-frequency, or DTMF) and speech-enabled IVR (optional add-on) for inbound and outbound calls and callbacks.

Customers can use voice commands to retrieve information without ever speaking with an agent, or to quickly navigate to the correct department or agent to best assist them.

The IVR comes with a web-based, easy-to-use, drag-and-drop call flow builder that makes it easy for business users to configure and/or maintain IVR call flows.

Touch-tone (DTMF) IVR

A nimble touch-tone IVR solution provides intelligent call routing and basic self-service.

The feature set includes:

●     Touch-tone (DTMF) caller inputs

●     Audio prompts

●     Third-party integrations

●     Screen-pop data collected in IVR passed to agents

●     Historical reports available in Analyzer

●     Browser-based, drag-and-drop call flow builder

Speech-enabled IVR (optional add-on)

Speech-enabled IVR is a sophisticated customer engagement solution powered by Text-To-Speech (TTS), speech recognition, and the automation of complex end-user tasks. This solution is priced as an a la carte Webex Contact Center feature.

The feature set includes:

●     Touch-tone (DTMF) caller inputs

●     Multilingual Automated Speech Recognition (ASR)

●     Open-ended speech responses

●     Multilingual Text-To-Speech (TTS)

●     Third-party integrations

●     Screen-pop data collected in IVR passed to agents

●     Real-time and historical reports

●     Browser-based, drag-and-drop call flow builder

Both touch-tone IVR and speech-enabled IVR are cloud-based and integrated into Webex Contact Center. The speech-enabled IVR can be invoked from within the touch-tone IVR, so in some use cases it may be most economical to split the application between the two solutions.

CRM integrations

Webex Contact Center has pre-built connectors for integration with several industry-leading CRM systems, including Salesforce, Zendesk, and MS Dynamics.

Additionally, the Cisco Professional Services team can help deliver integration with other CRM applications as a custom paid professional services engagement.

As part of the integration, data about the customer and the context of the call is delivered to the agent in an automatic screen pop.

Webex Contact Center also logs the interaction within the CRM application to capture the inbound call. The integration enables click-to-dial from within the CRM applications, where the agent can click on a phone number to dial out to the customer. The out-dialed call is automatically logged against the record whose number has been dialed out.

The CRM connectors provide CTI integration between the Webex Contact Center ACD and the customer’s CRM tool. The toolset allows for:

●     Agent state control

●     Call control

●     Click to dial

●     Screen pop on Automatic Number ID (ANI) or call variables

●     Receiving inbound and placing outbound (click-to-dial) calls from the CRM

●     Automatic customer record screen pop in the CRM

●     Automatic call activity logging in CRM

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)

Webex Contact Center simplifies the deployment and management of multiple sites and agent locations, enabling companies to reduce the cost, complexity, and limitations of traditional contact center solutions.

The core infrastructure delivers the following data to the desktop client:

●     Automatic Number Identification (ANI)

●     Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS)

●     Prompt selection Customer-Entered Digits (CED)

●     Site, team, or agent selection

All of this is delivered to any agent connected to the application, anywhere in the world, without the deployment of any technology footprint in the enterprise.

Reporting and dashboards (Analyzer)

Analyzer brings data together from your Webex Contact Center Automated Call Distributor (ACD) and interactive voice response (IVR) so that you can analyze, understand, and manage your contact center and optimize for operational efficiency in new and innovative ways.

This feature is available with Premium Agent seats only.

Data is presented via Analyzer as:

●     Real-time and historical operational dashboards that can be used to monitor operations throughout the day to make operational changes that maximize performance and productivity.

●     Scheduled performance reports that automate creation of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports previously created manually.

●     Exploratory and trend analyses that capture, organize, and interactively explore and cross-analyze customer interactions and agent activity with business and financial results to find optimization opportunities.

●     Details of the types of information provided in Analyzer may be seen in Figure 2.

Analyzer reporting and dashboards

At the core of the Analyzer is a cloud data service (the data repository), which stores customer interaction and agent activity records from Webex Contact Center. The repository can be updated on a real-time or periodic basis, depending on customer needs.

Gathering data from Webex Contact Center Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) contact center applications on a real-time or periodic basis, Analyzer creates integrated customer interaction and agent activity records for each customer engagement to provide operational metrics and business insights.

Analyzer can be used to segment, profile, and visualize data in contact center systems and identify key variables that affect contact center efficiency and agent productivity.

With these reporting tools customers can:

●     Create custom measures. Create new business metrics calculated using fields and measures from the Webex Contact Center IVR and ACD.

●     Determine what impacts business outcomes. Identify key variables that impact operational efficiency. Statistically pinpoint high-performing agent teams

●     Determine what and who delivers results. Analyze operational metrics and agent productivity and discover how to best optimize for performance.

Categorize performance data by:

●     Entry points

●     Queues

●     Agents

●     Sites

With an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface, users can segment, profile, table, and graph data into historical or real-time dashboards, performance reports, and derive insights.

Data from Webex Contact Center ACD, IVR, chat, email, and social interactions appear in a left-side panel. That data can then be dragged and dropped into a central canvas to create insights and visualizations in interactive tables, bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and time motion charts.

Users can create ad-hoc reports by selecting the following:

●     Report elements on which they would like to report—teams, queues, sites, or entry points

●     Graph and table parameters to display

●     Specific timeframe for the data

Real-time reporting

Summary views provide a snapshot of real-time contact volumes, service levels, and abandon rates at each site and across the enterprise.

Call statistics are collected and normalized across geography and technology for multi-sourced environments. Data can be presented in either a graph or tabular display.

Data parameters racked in real-time reports include:

●     Connected contacts, which are the current number of contacts that have been accepted by a remote site and have not terminated.

●     Queued contacts, which are the current number of contacts that have been connected to the Webex Contact Center service and are waiting to be answered.

This information allows for more efficient call routing and call distribution management. From this centralized management system, contact center managers have real-time control and visibility into call queuing and routing strategies and real-time monitoring.

This powerful dashboard can be customized to display customer-defined information for each site. This enables the customer to manage, monitor, and enforce service-level adherence for each site and for the enterprise. User-level privileges define access for multi-party management of the specific sites and teams.

The following data is available for display in real-time interval reports and in historical reports for all supported channels, including voice, chat, and email:

●     Queue: the virtual team to which the data belongs.

●     Time: a period of time in 30-minute intervals, for which call activity is displayed.

●     Incoming calls: total number of calls received during the report interval.

●     Agent activity: total time an agent spends in each agent state.

●     Answered calls: number of calls accepted by a remote site.

●     Queued contacts per hour: number of contacts queued during the report interval.

●     Abandoned contacts: number of contacts abandoned during the report interval.

●     Completed calls: total number of calls in the system during the report interval. Includes answered and abandoned calls.

●     Disconnected calls: total number of calls answered, then disconnected within the lost call threshold period.

●     Short calls: total number of calls terminated within the short call threshold without being distributed to a remote site. This metric is only for voice contacts.

●     Answer time: cumulative time between when contacts arrive at the Webex Contact Center service and when they were answered.

●     Talk/connected time: cumulative talk time.

●     Queue time: cumulative time that calls were queued, waiting to be routed to a remote site.

●     Abandoned time: cumulative amount of time contacts were in the system for longer than the short contact threshold time, but terminated before being answered by an agent.

●     IVR time: cumulative amount of time calls were in the IVR system, waiting to be handled.

●     Percentage of answered contacts: number of answered contacts divided by the number of contacts that arrived, minus short calls, multiplied by 100. An answered call is a call accepted by a remote site and either disconnected within the lost call threshold, answered by an agent, or queued at the remote site during the report interval.

●     Average handle time: average handle time, calculated by dividing total contact time by the total number of contacts terminated during the report interval.

●     Average queued time: total amount of time that contacts were in queue waiting to be sent to a remote site, divided by the total number of contacts that were queued.

●     Average abandoned time: total amount of time that contacts were in the system before being abandoned, divided by the total number of contacts abandoned.

●     Average speed of answer: total answer time divided by total number of answered calls.

●     Service level: percentage of contacts answered within the predefined service level threshold provisioned for the virtual team.

●     Historical reports.

Historical call reports provide an omnichannel view of:

●     Weekly volume summaries.

●     Default and user-defined reports.

●     Call detail record views at different levels.

●     Queue reports.

●     Customizable graphs.

●     Download capability.

Contact call details are displayed for all calls and all legs of the call. The call detail record represents the complete life cycle of a caller. It tracks the history of the call from the time it arrived at the entry point, either as a new, external call or as a call transferred from another entry point or queue, until the call is terminated. When an agent transfers a call to another agent, a segment detail record is created for each leg of the call.

Historical agent reports provide an omnichannel view of:

●     Site, team, and agent reports.

●     Performance summaries.

●     Wrap-up and idle code reports.

Integrations and open APIs

Webex Contact Center is based on an open platform surrounded by several APIs and interfaces. This allows it to easily integrate with other in-house and off-the-shelf and applications to leverage existing systems and investments.

This open platform also allows Webex Contact Center to integrate with other applications in the marketplace to create unique end-to-end solutions for customers. Webex Contact Center APIs allow third parties to develop software to leverage and extend Webex Contact Center capabilities.

Webex Contact Center offers the following REST APIs:

Contact data APIs: Provides session-specific enhanced call data records including:

●     Caller and agent details

●     IVR activities

●     Call wrap-up codes

●     Call recordings

Reporting APIs: RESTful APIs for extracting bulk reports or individual records regarding agent activity, queue activity, agent and queue provisioning information, call recordings and metadata, etc.

Examples of integration options include:

CTI integration with CRM applications

●     Webex Contact Center supports CTI functionality, including screen pops and record retrieval. Webex solutions are open and based on industry standards, not proprietary integrations and protocols. With this approach, customers are able to integrate with a number of different CRM applications.

Third-party IVR integration

●     Integrate your existing IVR into the Webex Contact Center application and call flow by placing it at the beginning, middle, or end of the Webex Contact Center call.

●     DNIS pool-based call matching correlates incoming calls on specific Webex Contact Center DNISs to corresponding outgoing calls to a customer’s IVR DNISs to help maintain DNIS-based call routing.

Workforce Management (WFM) integration

●     Allows customers to integrate their existing WFM systems with Webex Contact Center.

●     Provides historic agent activity data for agent scheduling within a third-party WFM.

●     Provides real-time, event-driven agent activity notification for adherence computation

In addition to the core features provided with Webex Contact Center, Webex provides a number of optional add-on features, and partners with select vendors to provide other best-in-class functionality specifically tested and optimized to integrate with Webex Contact Center.

Add-on feature options

Webex Workforce Optimization (Webex WFO)

Webex Contact Center has an optional cloud workforce optimization suite (Webex WFO) that provides three core functions:

See the Webex WFO data sheet for complete details on the solution.

Webex WFO Workforce Management (WFM)

Workforce optimization solutions offer contact center supervisors, agents, and staffing analysts the ability to dynamically manage agent schedules, forecast and plan staffing based on trends, and ensure adherence to schedules.

Key features include:

●     Dynamic scheduling: allows agents, supervisors, and staffing analysts to collaborate in creating a schedule that meets everyone’s needs

●     Dynamic intra-day scheduling: enables last-minute scheduling changes

●     Automated agent approval: for exceptions, time off, schedule offer/trade, and mentoring. Provides set workflows to automate approval, denial, waitlisting, and manual handling

●     Agent-initiated peer mentoring: when an agent submits a request and the peer accepts, there is an automated supervisor approval, and both agents’ schedules are updated

●     Gamification of agent KPIs: agents earn badges for quality scores and adherence

●     Strategic planning and forecasting: allow users to forecast staffing needs based on trends

●     Vacation and holiday planning

Webex WFO Quality Management (QM)

Quality Management helps customers measure agent efficiency and performance using tailored evaluation forms.

Key features include:

●     Multichannel quality evaluation: evaluate call, email, and chat interactions.

●     Targeted evaluations: find interactions of interest with pinpoint precision using a combination of transaction data, customer data, speech energy, and other business-related metadata.

●     Library of customized evaluation forms: percentage or points-based.

●     Pinpoint evaluation commenting: add comments to a call and search for comments by questions, section, form, or duration.

●     Gamification of agent KPIs: agents earn badges for quality scores and adherence.

●     Evaluation calibration: supervisors, managers, and agents can comment on an evaluation for a collaborative approach to quality.

●     Automated contact queue: contacts are routed to a contact queue according to workflow configuration.

●     Post-call survey data integration with call data makes playback easily accessible during evaluations.

●     Export calls: use for training or within e-learning platforms.

Webex WFO Analytics

Webex WFO Analytics helps organizations gain data-driven insights to improve the customer experience and to drive revenue with every customer interaction.

Companies can analyze interactions and make valuable discoveries about your customers, employees, and business. With sophisticated speech, desktop, and text analytics, organizations can unlock a gold mine of intelligence buried in the contact center.

Key features include:

●     Speech analytics (phonetics)

●     Speech-to-text transcribed audio to full-text transcripts

●     Text analytics for channels, including email, chat, text, social media, and surveys

●     Desktop analytics to track desktop activity, facilitate compliance, and create automated workflows with activity triggers

●     Sentiment analysis, which translates all call interactions into a score of positive, neutral, or negative automatically

●     Powerful, easy-to-use dashboards with drill-down capabilities

●     Predictive quality evaluation scores

●     Predictive Net Promoter Scores (NPS) using NPS survey data and speech data to automatically evaluate 100 percent of your customer interactions

●     Language packs to help you understand customers, regardless of linguistics

●     Out-of-the-box and easy-to-use features

●     Dynamic reporting options with rich data visualizations like phrase clouds and interactive charts

●     Advanced customization dashboard capabilities

●     Widget-based dashboards and an intuitive interface

Outbound voice option

This option, with its combination of outbound dialing modes, complements the powerful inbound call-handling capability of Webex Contact Center.

Allocate agents to handle only inbound, only outbound, or both inbound and outbound contacts, offering an effective way to increase resource use.

Outbound campaigns

The outbound campaigns option improves agent productivity and the overall business performance of a contact center by letting agents spend more time talking to customers and less time trying to reach them.

The outbound campaigns add-on feature provides:

●     Outbound campaign management, including campaign chaining

●     Contact list management

●     Advanced contact strategies across multiple contact numbers

●     Automation with preview and progressive dialing

●     Compliance tools

Figure 3 details the components of the outbound campaigns add-on.

Outbound campaign functionality

List and campaign management capabilities

●     The outbound campaigns add-on provides powerful, yet flexible contact list and campaign management capabilities. This allows contact center managers to focus on their customer engagement strategy instead of spending time maintaining lists.

●     There are flexible options to upload outbound calling lists into the campaign manager. This can be done by uploading flat files or integrating with customer databases or third-party data sources.

●     These imported outbound lists can then be segmented using business rules-driven filters to be consumed by various outbound campaigns. Administrators can make real-time adjustments to the lists based on campaign performance or a shift in business strategy.

●     At the contact level, businesses can prioritize the sequence of phone numbers to be dialed for a contact based on their individual preference.

Campaign runtime strategies: the campaign manager feature supports different management strategies for outbound campaigns, including:

●     Dialing rules

●     Schedule-based campaign runtime automation

●     Ability to switch across contact points based on outcome

●     Contact-specific retry strategy

Telephony dialing modes: the outbound campaign function supports preview and progressive dialing modes.

●     Preview dialer: At the end of a call agents see the next call in the list. They review the contact record and decide when to make the call or skip to the next name on the list. This is ideal for sales where the agent needs to conduct research between calls to increase the chance of a successful sale.

●     Progressive dialer automatically dials the next number on the list. This removes the wait time between calls and can significantly improve agent productivity. This works best when sales calls are similar in nature and agents don’t need time to research between calls.

Preview and progressive dialing

Figure 4 illustrates the two different telephony dialing modes.

Compliance tools: The outbound campaigns feature provides tools to ensure that outbound campaigns stay compliant with industry regulations.

●     For the United States, it has superior Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance tools, which include checking do-not-call lists at the federal, enterprise, and/or campaign level and manual dial-out options to contacts who have not provided Prior Express Written Consent (PEWC).

●     It also maintains compliance with state laws around calling, such as time-zone-specific calling windows.

●     In the United Kingdom, the compliance tool helps ensure adherence to Ofcom’s (the UK’s communications regulator) outbound calling rules. The tools allow administrators to set communication thresholds and retry strategies for each contact number.

Outbound reports: The outbound campaigns feature includes real-time and historical reports, allowing you to review the status of your campaign as it occurs, and look back to see what worked and what didn’t across past campaigns.

Real-time reports include:

●     Contact versus agent availability

●     Contact status

●     Contact success ratio by campaign

●     Campaign target achieved

●     Calls dialed for the week by mode

Historical reports include:

●     Campaign summary

●     Do Not Call blocked

●     Contact attempt

●     Abandon percentage

●     Callback

●     Agent attempt

●     Disposition by campaign, all with user-specified filters

Key features of outbound reports include:

●     Automatic campaign runtime configuration based on date range and specific days

●     Contact data uploads via seamless database integrations or via flat files

●     Partial update of date for timely data refreshment

●     Contact selection algorithm configurable by market strategy

●     Contact selection filters driven by business outcomes

●     Sharing contact lists across multiple campaigns

●     Configuring multiple business outcomes per campaign

●     Campaign chaining, with the option to copy and move campaigns

●     Configuring dial plans and recalls for each business outcome to maintain contact life cycle

●     Compliance filtering for Do-Not-Call (DNC) lists at the federal, global, and campaign levels

●     Scrubbing of contact lists against DNC lists

●     Contact list segmentation by time zone

●     Adherence to state specific and global calling times, rules, and regulations

●     Multiple calling numbers per contact in a single campaign

●     Configuring global retries across all numbers provided for a contact in a single campaign

Data security and data privacy

Certifications and attestations

CATO compliant (Cisco InfoSec standard)

HIPAA compliance

GDPR compliance

Webex Contact Center 1.0 is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified by a third-party Attestation Of Compliance (AOC) audit. AOC is reviewed annually, unless otherwise required by a business or based on industry security changes that are applicable to Webex Contact Center.

The security safeguards implemented for Webex Contact Center services meet the policy and control requirements as set forth in Webex Contact Center’s Security Framework and are aligned with the Cisco Security and Trust Organization (STO).

Review cycle

Webex Contact Center manages its information security policy using a security lifecycle management process. This process includes the following components focusing on policy:

●     Policy lifecycle management

●     Ratification, approval, and implementation

●     Annual review, updates (as necessary), and recertification

●     Annual communication and awareness training

●     Exceptions management

Management commitment

Management is responsible for oversight and governance to the policy lifecycle process ensuring that Webex Contact Center’s security posture, policies, and practices are implemented, updated, and communicated to staff and other parties as appropriate.

Cisco operations and engineering teams are responsible to deploy IT systems, services, and processes consistent with these policies.

The Cisco STO will communicate recommended policy changes to management and relevant members and parties as business needs dictate, or at least annually. An employee found to have violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

For more information see the Webex Contact Center Privacy data sheet or visit the Cisco Trust Center online.

Global availability

Currently available countries include:

Americas: Canada, United States

APJC: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam

LATAM: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay

EMEAR: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom

System requirements

Supported browsers:

Microsoft Windows 10:

●     Chrome V76.0.3809 and higher

●     Firefox ESR 68 and higher ESRs

●     Microsoft Edge V42.17134 and higher

Mac OS X:

●     Chrome V76.0.3809 and higher

●     Firefox ESR 68 and higher ESRs

Chromebook:

●     Chromium v73 and higher

●     Chrome V76.0.3809 and higher

Licensing

Webex Contact Center is a cloud service available in either a Concurrent Agent or Named Agent buying model (See Table 1). See the Webex Contact Center ordering guide for additional details.

Webex Contact Center is also available under Cisco’s Collaboration Flex Plan. Refer to the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan Contact Center data sheet and the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan Contact Center ordering guide for more information on purchasing as part of this plan.

Webex Contact Center supports usage-based overages. Overage SKUs will automatically be added to each order. Cloud usage will be reported on a monthly basis and billed as the committed portion, and any usage above the committed levels will be billed as overage.

Upon reasonable request from Webex, you will assist and make information available to Webex to facilitate verification of the number of SaaS or software licenses that you have installed, accessed, deployed, or activated.

A Contact Center user is a user who logs into the contact center system as part of the job duties performed on the customer’s behalf.

Concurrent Agent is the maximum quantity of Contact Center users who are simultaneously logged in to use the Webex Contact Center Enterprise software or services.

Named Agent is a unique Contact Center user who logs in in any given month to use the Webex Contact Center software or services.

Table 1.           Available buying model and agent types for Webex Contact Center

Agent types

Webex Contact Center is available in two agent types that can be combined per the selected agent model. Table 2 explains the types. Table 3 details considerations when choosing agent types.

Table 2.           Available agent types for Webex Contact Center

Table 3.           Webex Contact Center agent type considerations

Features and benefits by agent types

Your agent type selection entitles you to receive a bundle of Webex Contact Center features. Table 4 describes the included features and additional options available based on the agent type selections.

Table 4.           Webex Contact Center features by agent type

Ordering information

To place an order, contact your local Cisco certified partner or Cisco sales agent. If you need help finding a partner in your area, use the Partner Locator tool. Your partner or Cisco sales agent can also assist with any modifications to your subscription after your initial order is placed.

Refer to the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan Contact Center ordering guide for complete ordering details.

Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan

Flex up on the cloud momentum

If your business needs a more intuitive way to work and a more predictable financial path to the cloud, talk to your Cisco representative about the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan. For additional information, visit: cisco.com/go/collaborationflexplan

The Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan gives businesses an intelligent and practical path for taking their business from on-premises to cloud communications and collaboration at their own pace, with an award-winning user experience at every step.

You can buy meeting, team collaboration, calling, and contact center services for all employees, or simply purchase what you need today and grow at your own pace. With the Flex Plan, one agreement includes software, upgrades, and support.

The Collaboration Flex Plan offers several important benefits:

Full collaboration suite: Access to a full-stack, enterprise-grade cloud collaboration bundle that includes everything a business needs—cloud calling, meetings, team collaboration, contact center, and a broad portfolio of integrated devices.

Single OpEx subscription: Remove the need for hefty upfront capital investments and replace them with predictable monthly fees. Consolidate technology roadmaps and vendor relationships (license management, billing, support).

Secure and reliable cloud service and implementation, supported by certified Cisco enterprise channel partners.

Flexibility to support a mix of on-premises and cloud system deployments, with financial protection for future migration of any included Cisco on-premises licenses.

Built to support multisite and global multi-national networking requirements.

Intelligent user experience that integrates customer collaboration applications and devices with other cloud applications you depend on, so you can streamline workflows and support a more intuitive way to work.

Technical support services

Cisco offers technical support services covering the areas of problem resolution, customer success and adoption, and designated support management in three service tiers: Basic, Enhanced, and Premium (Figure 5). Basic Support is included with any Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan subscription at no additional cost for the duration of your subscription. For more information about Basic, Enhanced, and Premium Support, read the services description for Cisco Software Support Services.

Refer to the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan Contact Center ordering guide for complete ordering details.

Cisco support levels and what they include

Cisco and partner services

Adapt to market changes while increasing productivity, improving competitive advantage, and delivering a rich media experience across any workspace. The combined strengths of Cisco and our partners provide a portfolio of services that can help you prepare your infrastructure for future changes aligning to long-term business goals. Together, we create innovative, network-centric architecture solutions resulting in a scalable and responsive foundation that can help you realize the full value of your IT and communication investment.

For more information, visit Cisco Contact Center Services.

Cisco environmental sustainability

Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.

Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in Table 5.

Table 5.           Environmental sustainability

Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.

Cisco Capital

Flexible payment solutions to help you achieve your objectives

Cisco Capital^® financing makes it easier to get the right technology to achieve your objectives, enable business transformation, and help you stay competitive. We can help you reduce the total cost of ownership, conserve capital, and accelerate growth. In more than 100 countries, our flexible payment solutions can help you acquire hardware, software, services, and complementary third-party equipment in easy, predictable payments. Learn more.

For more information

For more information about Cisco contact center products, visit cisco.com/go/cc.

Document history