Call Management for IVR, CRM and other components:
CTI or Computer Telephony Integration is most important piece in an ICM environment.
Example:
CTI events are a key to keeping track of all the calls coming in and out of the call center.
For example, every time a call rings an agent's phone, a "CALL_DELIVERED" event is generated and sent over the CTI connection. Every time an agent answers a call, a "CALL_ESTABLISHED" event is generated and sent over the CTI connection. Several types of events exist and act as triggers for any application that might be listening to the communication. The CallID is also used to match up the voice call with the data so that the two elements do not get separated while traveling between multiple peripherals.
The CTI connection allows the call routing infrastructure to monitor the status of the telecom peripherals on the network. Since all the peripherals have CTI connections, the call router can verify if a destination peripheral is online and available before making a decision to send a call to it. An example would be an emergency situation such as power outage in a call center. The call router has the ability to determine (sending by heartbeats down the CTI connection). If a response is not returned within a specific time interval, the call router will automatically re-route calls to a different call center.
VRU
Voice Response Unit, is a combination of a computer that runs voice applications and hardware that allows it to communicate with the caller. Its primary function is to answer calls and provide voice menus to callers that allow them to service themselves without agent interaction.
Example:
In a healthcare insurance card member and provider, VRU is the peripheral that customers interact with that prompts them to enter a card number over the telephone. In latest environments it is not uncommon for the VRU to be equipped with voice recognition hardware that allows the customer to navigate through the menus by speaking instead of pushing the buttons on a telephone. Text-to-speech technology which speaks dynamically created content back to the customer such as account balances, telephone numbers, and addresses.
The hardware associated with a VRU usually consists of an operating system, incoming telephone lines and a CTI link connecting the VRU to other peripherals on the network.
VDN
Vector Directory Number, is an extension to devices that employees are used to dialing in an office environment. It usually consists of 4 to 6 digits, and is only connectable from inside the company's voice network. Every VDN is associated with a vector or multiple vectors. Vectors are programming steps that allows the switch to logically manipulate the call.
Example:
A vector might have a step that plays an announcement, collects touch-tone digits, routes the call to another VDN, or most importantly queues the call to a skill group.
Skill groups are agents that are grouped together because they have the same skill sets.
When the ACD queues a call to a skill group, it places the caller on hold and waits for an agent with specific skill set to become available to answer the call. When an agent in the skill group becomes available, the call is transferred and the agent services the customer.
ACD
Automatic Call Distributor is a telephone switch that sits at the front of a company's voice network. All calls arriving from the network carrier gets delivered to the ACD using TDM (Time Division Multiplexing).
The ACD has CTI connectivity through hardware blades MAPD that allow it to communicate with other peripherals on the network.
TDM
Time Division Multiplexing, is a process of taking multiple phone lines from the carrier and multiplexing the information into a single transmission where each frame is sent in specific time slots. When then transmission reaches the destination site, the information is de-multiplexed back into individual phone lines.
PBX
Private Branch Exchange is a private telephone network used within a company. The users of the PBX phone system share a number of outside lines for making external phone calls. A PBX connects the internal telephones within a business and also connects them to the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
PSTN
Public switched telephone network
MAPD
The ACD has CTI connectivity through hardware blades known as the Multi-Application Platform on Definity (MAPD –it is an Avaya product) that allow it to communicate with the other peripherals on the network.
High Level Call flow through IVR and Pega using various other components are mentioned in the above diagram.
Note: there is other similar product in the market that provided the connectivity to CTI.
