NEC Offers Contact Center Agents UC ParityNEC Offers Contact Center Agents UC Parity

Agents can change their status within the contact center just as enterprise users change their status within the enterprise.

A couple years ago, at VoiceCon Orlando 2008, NEC announced UNIVERGE UC700 Desktop Client with rich UC functionality including voice, video and web conferencing, white boarding, screen sharing, screen capture, and screen pops. One of the key messages in the announcement was support for role-based communications, allowing companies to tailor communications based on user roles, rather than having technology dictate how users communicate.This year at VoiceCon 2010, NEC announced enhancements to UC Enterprise (UCE) 700, including a UCE Agent module. Designed for contact center agents, it provides all the agent-specific functions required including an Information Panel with statistics such as number of calls in queue, time for longest call waiting, presence of other agents, etc.

What makes UC700 somewhat* unique is that the contact center agent client also offers the same basic functions of UCE Desktop for Knowledge Worker. By including features like IM, contact list, call control, and call history, a single soft client can allow workers to seamlessly move from agent to business roles with one desktop client. Agents can change their status within the contact center just as enterprise users change their status within the enterprise.

What's the advantage of the NEC approach? A knowledge worker that needs to log-in because the call center has gotten busy doesn't have to leave their familiar desktop and bring up an entirely new application. And an agent that has to call a customer won't have to offer that customer-unfriendly excuse, "My system doesn't let me do that."

NEC's General Manager for Sales Support and Engineering comments on the announcement in the video below.

* The asterisk here is intended at least partially as a pre-emptive strike against Contrarian. NEC is not alone in having an agent client that is simply a flavor of the UC client; Interactive Intelligence's Interaction Client offers the same advantages. That said, the majority of vendors have completely different desktop clients for agents and knowledge workers, making this NEC announcement worthy of note.Agents can change their status within the contact center just as enterprise users change their status within the enterprise.