UCCX and UCCE with Voice and Video

Video Call and Video Chat for Cisco UCCX/UCCE

Video in contact center is something we’re hearing more and more about lately. Video call and video chat will most likely become conventional contact center channels thanks to WebRTC and zealous marketing from major UC&CC vendors.

Let’s not put here marketing stuff about how cool it is. Instead, we’ll consider ways to enable video in Cisco UCCX/UCCE.

The first thing that comes in mind is Cisco Jabber Guest – a native solution from Cisco that helps web-visitors interact with enterprise workers, including contact center agents. Users click the URL link and their browser open an audio/video session to wherever Jabber Guest Server routes them. On the back-end you’ll need the Cisco UCM, Cisco Jabber Guest server with Cisco Expressway-C/-E and internal video-enabled endpoint.

As guests, your website visitors are offered:

• a point-to-point audio/video,
• in-call control through a keypad,
• the ability to mute video, audio, or both.

While this could be enough to offer a guest access to your employees (for associates, suppliers, partners etc), the use of Jabber Guest in the contact center is a big question because of two major issues:

1. Jabber Guest requires a browser plug-in to be installed before making a call. A client will hardly agree to spend his time installing the plug-in to make a single call to your contact center. He heeds a “click-to-video” feature, but not the “click-to-install-to-video” one.
2. When calling through Jabber Guest a client has no collaboration features. The dual video definitely improves the communications  – you see the person you’re talking to and how he reacts to what you’re saying. But to provide the real LIVE assistance your agents need to collaborate with clients like they’re in person – exchange the docs, co-work on the website, show, point, discuss etc.

So, when thinking about video call / video chat channel for your contact center you should also consider third party solutions designed specifically for the customer service. The key features that make them different from Jabber Guest are:

• no downloads or plug-ins are required even for mobile browsers (thanks to WebRTC),
• integration with contact center software,
• web-collaboration features – chat, app sharing, co-browsing,
• interaction recording.

There are several vendors of video chat solutions on the market, of which Aurus RichCall is the only that claims to be designed specifically for Cisco UCCX/UCCE:

• it inherits UCCX/UCCE agent accounts, skill groups and routing rules,
• the video call bypasses the IVR menu and gets routed right to the appropriate skill group,
• the agent’s UI is integrated with Cisco Finesse or Cisco Agent Desktop (CAD),
• each video chat session is  reflected in Cisco Unified CCX Historical Reports and Cisco Unified Intelligence Center,
• the audio is recorded by the call recording software already deployed in contact center.

Seems to be quite a niche solution, but developed by Cisco Solution Partner for Cisco contact center platforms. So, if you’re running the UCCX/UCCE-based contact center, it may be of your interest.