Bringing Cloud Services to On-Premises Contact Centers

Hybrid Cloud Strategies

A few years ago, when the contact center industry started talking about cloud being the inevitable next step in the evolution of the contact centers, there were some specific benefits which fueled that trend, such as faster delivery of innovation and updates.

Though the benefits of cloud-based software delivery are great, many on-premises contact center enterprise customers are not yet ready to migrate their contact center investments to a public cloud solution and would prefer an option that brings them the benefits of cloud technologies while safeguarding their investments and requirements for higher control, deployment flexibility, and security.

Recognizing this need, Cisco has been a proponent of hybrid cloud strategy for a while. There is no doubt that there are features and functionality that are best delivered from the cloud, even for on-premises solutions. However, what we need to maximize for is not just the delivery model but overall user experience. As an analogy, do you think a smartphone would be able to deliver the experience it delivers if it were a pure cloud only device? Probably not. It is the hybrid cloud nature of the phone hardware and software working with the cloud-based applications which delivers the exceptional experience that the world loves.

Admin Enhancements for Operations Resiliency

With that thinking in mind, we have doubled down on our hybrid cloud strategy to offer the cloud technology benefits that enterprise administrators care about the most and enhanced the way your on-premises contact center operates.

Cloud-like upgrade capabilities

• The new dynamic release strategy will provide continuous delivery of new features as software updates for customers who would like to stay current with the latest features. (Customers who prefer infrequent updates can continue to stay on long term releases such as 12.5). The new release strategy document helps you to choose the right kind of release for your needs.
• Receive automatic update notifications as soon as new patches and features become available.
• Automatically download software updates from the cloud-hosted repository.
• Orchestrate end-to-end solution upgrades using a simple, one-touch upgrade command with minimal downtime and planning of maintenance windows; you choose when you want to make updates.
• Graceful shutdown allows you to apply firmware upgrades, OS security updates and application patches without impacting ongoing operations, mitigating the need for complex maintenance windows.
• View upgrade progress indicators and receive email notifications about success and failure of upgrades.
• Automatic compatibility checks during upgrade and rollback ensure all components are compatible to minimize risk of outages during upgrades.

End-to-end contact center visibility

• Our enterprise solutions are now natively integrated with AppDynamics to provide enhanced serviceability with alerting, health dashboards and early detection of performance issues leading to increased uptime and business continuity.

Increased Scale

• Now your contact center can scale to support up to 36,000 concurrent agents to accommodate even the largest enterprises.

Enhancing Agent Experiences

We’ve also kept the agent top of mind when creating new features for this release; designed around making their day to day a breeze, empowering them to become super-agents, and providing them with the tools they need to work anywhere.

AI powered agent experiences

• Agent Answers provides AI powered real-time suggestions and recommendations based on the agent and caller interaction – making every agent a super-agent. The embedded gadget listens to the call and proactively provides suggested answers and knowledge-based articles, so the agent can spend less time searching for answers and more time providing excellent customer service.
• The Call Transcript gadget dynamically converts the voice conversation to text so the agent can view in real-time for reference.

Less App Switching

• Multi-tab gadgets provide an all-in-one interface within the agent desktop application, allowing the agent to see more information in a concise and readily accessible manner.

Work Your Way

• Agent device selection allows agents to share their extension across multiple devices and select the one they’d like to work with.
• Support for remote agents to sign into the desktop without having to be connected via VPN (available for early field trials).

Benefits for Everyone

Whether you’re an IT admin or a contact center agent, we’ve added benefits to make your job easier. We’re excited to deliver all these new enhancements and features to our on-premises customers so they too can begin benefitting from the cloud. We continue to invest in user and admin functionality for on-premises and private cloud customers while giving them graceful experiences to transition to the cloud at their own pace.

For more information on Release 12.6, read our Contact Center Enterprise data sheet.

To learn more about Cisco Contact Center solutions, visit our website.

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