Cisco Packaged Contact Center Enterprise 11.5 Data Sheet

Feature

Benefits

Solutions Benefits

Built-in omnichannel

Each agent license now includes enterprise chat and email along with voice.

Single sign-on

The solution simplifies login and password management for agents and supervisors by allowing just one login for the Cisco Finesse desktop and associated gadgets.

Precision routing for nonvoice contacts

It extends the power and simplicity of precision routing to nonvoice channels such as web, email, and chat.

Task routing application programming interface (API)

This API enables new types of interactions—such as videos, texts, and events from the Internet of Things—to be routed to the contact center.

Outbound campaign management API

This API allows for more precise control over contact center outbound calling campaigns.

Higher configuration limits

Cisco PCCE supports configurations of up to 2000 agents at 18 calls per second, with up to 50 queues per agent, 4000 call types, 2000 dialed numbers, and 1500 outbound ports. Please consult the solution design guide for additional configuration limits for scaling.

On-box Historical Data Server

The Historical Data Server (HDS) is now co-located on the Cisco PCCE server, lowering hardware and support costs.

Mobile agent call-by-call mode

Remote agents consume system resources (such as gateway ports and recording channels) only when actively on a call.

Virtual voice browser

This browser provides a server-based alternative to the Cisco IOS^® Software voice browser for use with Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (Cisco Unified CVP).

Solutions Benefits

Reduces long-distance toll charges and network bandwidth

Cisco Packaged Contact Center Enterprise treats the entire IP network as an intelligent switch, meaning that calls can be handled at the edge of the network, thereby reducing bandwidth usage.

Reduces integration costs

Until now, businesses had to integrate numerous products from different vendors, an expensive task that postponed service introduction. Cisco PCCE provides inbound and outbound voice and video, interactive voice response (IVR), and web interaction. In addition, the solution supports best-in-class contact center applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), workforce management, recording and monitoring, and wallboards. By consolidating all contact center functions in a single platform, Cisco PCCE reduces capital expenditures and integration expenses while accelerating time to market for a complete contact center solution.

Centralizes services

For the large enterprise, the value is a centralized contact center operation in which the software and administration are maintained centrally. This centralized operation helps the branch offices avoid purchasing and maintaining the software, installing their own upgrades, and making staffing decisions independent of the rest of the company.

Differentiates service

By retaining "call context" as customers are transferred among agents, even between different locations and to at-home agents, your company can differentiate itself through superior customer service. For example, you can retrieve the information a customer has already supplied to purchase one product or service when the customer initiates another purchase or interaction elsewhere.

Allows control of network resources

The enterprise can control certain network resources, such as assigning agents to skill groups and defining routing based on a number called or caller-entered digits such as account numbers. In addition, you can control all functions from a single operating interface, reducing training and support requirements.

Agent Capabilities and Benefits

Agent greeting

You can 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 on every call.

Agent whisper

Customers can play a configurable announcement to an agent right before the caller is connected, providing information about the type of call being delivered (for example, sales or tech support) and other guidance. Agents get information about the caller through their headset, speeding problem handling and improving first-call resolution.

Cisco Finesse desktop software

The Cisco Finesse desktop is a next-generation agent and supervisor desktop solution designed to provide easy access to the applications and information your customer service organization needs through a customizable web-based interface. It offers your customer care representatives an intuitive, easy-to-use desktop design to help improve their performance and satisfaction, in turn enhancing their ability to provide quality customer service.

For IT professionals, the Cisco Finesse application offers a thin-client agent desktop that integrates smoothly with the Cisco Collaboration portfolio. It is standards-compliant, and offers low cost of customization of the agent and supervisor desktops.

Remote Expert

Live video interactions between agents and consumers are supported through Cisco Remote Expert Mobile and Branch.

Extension Mobility (cross-cluster)

The product supports a Cisco Unified Communications Manager feature that allows agents to temporarily access their Cisco Unified IP Phone configuration, such as line appearances, services, and speed dials, from other Cisco Unified IP Phones.

Cisco Finesse IP Phone Agent

PCCE supports IP Phone Agent, allowing agents to use their Cisco IP phone to perform common agent tasks such as setting their state (for example, ready or not ready).

Management Capabilities and Benefits

Supervisory features

Cisco PCCE allows supervisors to view agent states and call information, send text chat messages to agents, interrupt or intercept calls, record conversations, and silently monitor agent calls from the corporate network or through a remote dial-in connection. These features add value to the supervisor's role in the contact center and help them effectively manage their teams.

With supervisor and agent chat capabilities, supervisors can send text messages to agents participating in a call, allowing supervisors to coach agents unobtrusively on cross- and up-sell opportunities and helping agents resolve customer situations. Supervisors can interrupt an agent's call to create a three-way conference, and then interact with both the caller and the agent to help resolve a concern. A supervisor can remove the agent from a call using the Intercept feature, allowing the supervisor and caller to complete the call on their own while the agent handles another customer request.

Supervisors can change an agent's state from their desktop. For example, agents may forget to make themselves available to take calls after a break or neglect to log out when away from their workstations for an extended period.

With Cisco PCCE, supervisors can easily log out missing agents or make unintentionally idle agents ready to take calls. This function is critical to highly distributed contact center deployments.

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.

Administration

Streamlined administration allows managers to perform all contact center administration centrally. The administrative interface in Cisco PCCE allows agents to be set up to handle voice, web, chat, and email contacts, depending on their assigned skill sets. The interface allows system managers, administrators, and supervisors to develop, modify, or view routing scripts; manage the system configuration; monitor contact center performance; define and request reports; and help ensure system security. This one user interface provides enterprisewide control across the single- or multisite contact center.

Cisco PCCE administrators can use a gadget on the Cisco Finesse desktop to quickly and easily manage the contact center application. Access to the contact center through the gadget can be restricted by role to prevent others from accessing the system.

Multitenancy with Departments

The Departments feature allows the administrator to segment contact center administration and business and routing logic based on different lines of business (LOBs) within an organization. This feature allows administrators to assign resources including agents, skill groups, call types, dialed numbers, and precision queues by LOB or department.

Along with configuration, scripting access is also segmented when using Internet Script Editor. Finally, using the Cisco Unified Intelligence Center Collections feature, you can segment reporting to match departments.

System inventory and notification

Taking advantage of the fixed deployment model of PCCE, the system autogenerates a visual representation of a PCCE deployment. It is a dashboard of administrative information including name; IP address; and shortcuts to other administration user interfaces such as Cisco Unified CVP operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P), etc. It also serves as a level-one dashboard providing visual notifications of errors or warnings of configuration or runtime problems through periodic autoscans, keeping check on system health and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).

System Capabilities and Benefits

Open systems

Cisco PCCE software takes full advantage of industry-standard hardware platforms, giving you the benefits of many software functions at a modest hardware cost. The open architecture of the system, which includes an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)-compliant database, as well as Java, COM, and.NET interfaces for computer-telephony-integration (CTI) applications, can integrate with existing contact center solutions, preserving investments in traditional systems and providing a platform for future applications.

Operating systems

Cisco PCCE supports Windows 2012 R2 and SQL 2014.

Distributed fault tolerance

From the network to the desktop, all Cisco PCCE 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-diagnostics 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.

Network management

Both enterprise and hosted contact centers require applications that provide management information and a single point of performance monitoring and troubleshooting. As you face the challenges of deploying, upgrading, and managing contact centers with integrated software, you may incur setup and ongoing operational and maintenance costs that affect your ability to provide your end users a cost-effective solution. Cisco PCCE software provides a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) interface for integration into centralized network management systems. It also provides integration into a broader unified communications management infrastructure, bundled with Cisco Unified Communications Manager. It provides new levels of availability and manageability during deployments and upgrades, as well as during normal contact center operations.

Cisco Prime^™ Collaboration Contact Center Assurance

Cisco Prime management supports Cisco Packaged Contact Center Enterprise, offering monitoring and diagnostics to help reduce costly PCCE downtime.

Security

Cisco PCCE supports the latest in security and data integrity features and solutions. When deployed, the application servers are hardened to reduce the attack surface and system vulnerability. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is available on all web-based applications and Transport Layer Security (TLS), and IP Security (IPsec) support is available for sockets-based communications to secure data in transit across trusted and untrusted networks.

Cisco Unified Computing System^™ (Cisco UCS^®), Cisco Integrated Services Routers Generation 3 (ISR G3), and Cisco Nexus^® support

Cisco UCS B200 M4 and Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers and Cisco UCS C240 M4 and Cisco UCS C240 M3S Rack-Mount Servers are supported. Support for the Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch (running on a virtual machine) provides multitenant secure Layer 4–7 networking services for the PCCE environment. Cisco PCCE is supported with Cisco ISR G3 (4000 Series) Gateways.

IPv6 dual mode

The product supports IPv6 endpoints in dual-network mode, enabling easier migration from IPv4.

Product Functions

Routing functions

Precision routing sends the contact to the best available resource, based on information about the caller and the attributes of the agent. By delivering the contact effectively, companies can reduce overall handle time, decrease the need for multiple transfers, and increase customer satisfaction with the experience.

Pre-Routing function

The Cisco Pre-Routing function makes routing decisions for each call while it is still in the carrier's network, enabling the Cisco platform to effectively segment customers, balance calls across the enterprise, and deliver each contact to the best enterprise resource the first time.

Customer profile routing

Cisco PCCE extends the sources of data available for making contact routing decisions and for populating agent desktop applications. For instance, Cisco PCCE can perform a lookup in your customer database during routing to guide its decisions. You can also use information from CRM applications to match customers with agents and expand the data available to screen pop applications.

Wherever an agent is based, the system delivers context-call event and customer-profile data as a contact arrives, allowing the agent or application to personalize service and help maximize efficiency.

Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal

PCCE includes Cisco Unified CVP, which operates with IP-based contact centers to provide a call-management and -treatment solution with a self-service IVR option that can use information available to customers on the corporate web server. With support for automatic-speech-recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities, callers can obtain personalized answers to their questions and conduct business in innovative ways without the costs of interacting with a live agent.

For example, with Cisco Unified CVP, you can pay a bill, order products and track delivery, locate a dealer, schedule a pickup, change name and address information, make travel arrangements, check payment status, receive notification of unusual activity, or request literature or product information.

Context Service

Cisco PCCE includes Context Service, a cloud-based omnichannel service that provides storage, tagging, and management of the data from interactions between businesses or organizations and their customers. The context and history information that the service provides helps customer care agents better understand and respond to the needs of customers.

Agent request API

The agent request API enables businesses to add voice callback as a feature to their custom-developed applications for the web and for mobile applications. Businesses can present callback as one of the ways or channels their customers can contact them, allowing customers to choose the channel of communication that works best for them.

Reporting

Cisco PCCE provides real-time and historical data necessary for mission-critical contact center reporting across all media types. The solution provides accurate and timely reports on contact center activity, helping managers make informed decisions regarding staffing levels and contact handling procedures.

Standard reporting is provided by the Cisco Unified Intelligence Center, which offers numerous report templates intended to meet common reporting needs. With the availability of the underlying data model and schema, you can easily develop custom reports to extend the solution to meet specific reporting needs. Furthermore, Cisco PCCE allows for the export of reporting data to external data warehouse environments for extended storage and advanced analytics.

For Cisco PCCE, the Live Data feature provides a new real-time architecture with significant real-time refresh-rate improvements through actionable real-time contact center information. Reports available from Cisco Unified Intelligence Center and reporting gadgets available on the Cisco Finesse desktop take advantage of this next-generation architecture.

Task routing

Cisco PCCE coordinates an agent's ability to work on multiple tasks from various channels while allowing the agent to be interrupted with high-priority tasks as required. For instance, an agent who is assisting a customer using text chat could handle another chat request at the same time, increasing the agent's productivity. Agents also can be delivered a task of a different channel type from their active task. For example, an agent responding to a customer's email message can be sent a voice call or a back-office task, allowing the agent to handle the real-time voice call and then return to the email message. In this way, Cisco PCCE can optimize your agents' activities, helping ensure the highest level of customer service with the resources available.

Remote-agent support

Remote-agent support extends the Cisco Unified Contact Center environment by providing CTI, contact distribution, and reporting capabilities to remote agents in branch offices or at home, through either a broadband network connection or their home telephone line. Cisco Unified Contact Center provides identical user interfaces and feature functions to agents regardless of location.

The Cisco Unified Mobile Agent feature adds a capability that enables agents to choose their destination phone number during login time, and change the number as often as they want, giving the contact center the flexibility to adapt to a fast-moving mobile workforce. With work-at-home programs, agents can be given location flexibility while reducing startup costs on the part of the contact center. An additional benefit of this capability is allowing agents to be on any phone device on any third-party switch infrastructure.

By incorporating agents outside the physical location of a contact center, Cisco Unified Contact Center helps companies better use existing and on-demand resources and fully extend CTI functions across the extended enterprise.

Video Contact Center

Cisco PCCE Video Contact Center provides high-quality video collaboration between customers and agents. Depending on how Video Contact Center is deployed, customers may connect with agents either from within the enterprise network or from mobile devices outside the enterprise. PCCE supports video in queue with IVR treatment, video on hold, and video recording. With Cisco Remote Expert, callers outside the enterprise's network can engage in web-based video chats or expert-assist sessions with agents. Unregistered callers can make calls using standard browsers on PC or Mac computers, or with tablets and smartphones. The Remote Expert Application Server and Media Broker components provide expert-assist functions, including co-browsing and screen sharing, remote control, annotation, content and URL push, and assisted form completion.

Social media customer care

Cisco SocialMiner^® software provides a social media customer care solution for Cisco Packaged Contact Center Enterprise that enables your company to proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through public social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook or other compatible public forum or blogging sites. By providing social media monitoring, queuing, and workflow to organize customer posts on social media networks and delivering them to your social media customer care team, your company can respond to customers in real time through the same social network they use to communicate.

This innovative capability is enabled by Cisco SocialMiner software, which searches multiple social networks to capture public customer postings, and then organizes, filters, and prioritizes these postings and presents them to your customer care team for response. Your customer service representatives could respond to a customer service problem or reach out to new customers looking for information about your products or services.

Cisco SocialMiner software combined with Cisco PCCE can help your company enhance customer service, improve customer loyalty, add new customers, and protect your brand.

Cisco Enterprise Chat and Email (ECE)

Cisco ECE offers multichannel capabilities with chat, email, and web callback. It helps businesses manage customer email messages and chats by automatically routing the chat or email to the correct resource, based upon information in the request and agent availability. With Web collaboration, customers can chat with agents live over the web, with agents able to handle multiple chat sessions simultaneously. The email feature helps businesses manage large volumes of customer email inquiries by sending automated replies and routing the email to the right resource. With the web callback feature, customers can request a callback from a contact center when the right agent is available. ECE also provides reporting and monitoring tools to more effectively manage your contact center.

Cisco Outbound Option

The Cisco Outbound Option, with its combination of outbound dialing modes, complements the powerful inbound call-handling capability of the Cisco PCCE platform. You can build campaigns to use predictive, progressive, or preview dialing, which is integrated with inbound calls and compliant with contact center service levels to offer a powerful blended solution. You can allocate agents to handle only inbound, only outbound, or both inbound and outbound contacts, offering an effective way to increase resource use in a contact center.

Call-progress analysis (CPA) (aka answering machine detection) is enabled for the UCCE Outbound Dialer when using Cisco Unified Border Element (Cisco UBE). Outbound reports include performance monitoring (PerfMon) counters and personal call-back improvements for better agent usage.

Product Name

Part Number

Cisco Packaged Contact Center Enterprise Solution

CCE-PAC-BUNDLE