The contact center has certainly seen its fair share of evolution, transformation and change thanks to technology. As customers and end users start to get more comfortable on multiple platforms, companies and call centers need to adjust and adapt multichannel service strategies. Now, emerging technology WebRTC is asking the contact center to adapt once again, serving the needs of customers demanding real time communications directly from their browsers.
1Stream, a provider of hosted call center technology, is one company looking toward WebRTC impacting the contact center space.
“This is one of the most exciting technical innovations we’ve seen in a long time,” says Director Jed Hewson, in a statement. “WebRTC is a new standard in HTML5 that makes it possible to send and receive voice and video calls directly from a browser — no extra software or plugins needed. It’s cutting edge technology that 1Stream will be first to deploy in South Africa.”
One of the biggest benefits of using WebRTC in contact center applications is that it eliminates the need for multichannel – starting on a website and changing to the phone. It makes interactions more contextual by enabling agents to see exactly what users were looking at on their screens at the moment of calling.
“The phone has always been a troublesome part of setting up a call centre – softphones are finicky, and having hardware sitting on your desktop is expensive as well as difficult to integrate with the software. Now all you need is a browser,” he said. “Even softphones have to be updated to new versions periodically, and that often introduces problems. With a phone built right into a website, there’s no need to upgrade anything on the agent’s computer.”
WebRTC is also beneficial for bringing together remote and virtual workforces – a very common component of today’s businesses.
“We can now set up a new agent in minutes,” says Hewson. “And we can do it on any operating system — they’re no longer restricted to Windows. This is going to reduce costs and make it a lot easier, especially for call centers that use home-based agents.”
1Stream is certainly not the first company to dive into integrating WebRTC into contact centers, but the move highlights the growth and awareness of the technology, especially as it expands its global reach and implementation.
Want to learn more about the latest in WebRTC? Be sure to attend WebRTC Conference & Expo, June 17-19 in Atlanta, Ga. Stay in touch with everything happening at the event -- follow us on Twitter.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
