CosmoCom's approach to IVR is fully consistent with its next generation, all-IP architecture. No dedicated circuit switched ports are used for access to an IVR application. Telephone calls are terminated on standard media gateways, and the IVR application is served to the telephone caller across the IP network and out through the media gateway. If and when the call is transferred to a live agent, the initial telephone leg of the call simply stays in place on the same media gateway. This is by far the most efficient and effective way to handle IVR, whether in a pure next generation network (NGN) environment, or an "overlay NGN" created specifically to provide a value added service such as IVR and contact center.

XML-Based Service Creation Tool

Creation and maintenance of IVR applications is made easy with CosmoDesigner, CosmoCom's easy-to-use graphical service creation environment for the design and deployment of call flows in CosmoCall Universe systems. Consistent with the unified nature of CosmoCall Universe, CosmoDesigner is an end-to-end GUI tool that defines the complete caller experience including IVR, ACD, and CCI (Computer-to-Computer Integration: CosmoCom's version of CTI), all without costly, multi-vendor platform integrations. CosmoDesigner lets users perform these functions without resorting to complex, obscure programming techniques.

Traditionally, the task of building call flows and assigning call center resources required highly skilled programmers. But with CosmoDesigner's drag-and-drop interface, even non-programmers can easily and rapidly create and modify call flows to flexibly and efficiently manage call center operations. Furthermore, CosmoDesigner is browser-based, so it is perfectly suited for hosted contact center applications.

Actions in CosmoDesigner are represented by icons called "function blocks"-standard call treatment modules that include IVR commands (e.g., "Play Announcement" and "Collect Digits"), ACD routing and queuing commands (e.g., "Transfer" and "Queue to"), NGIN pre-routing commands (e.g., "Time of Day", "% Allocation") and chat, e-mail and other multimedia functions. Creating a call flow with CosmoDesigner is as simple as dragging and dropping function block icons, interconnecting the icons with arrows, and configuring properties for each block. The resulting visual representation of the call flow is translated to an XML representation by CosmoDesigner that can be posted at any URL for immediate execution by the CosmoCall Universe platform.  There's never a need to take the production system offline, or restart services in order for the newly posted call flow to take effect.

CosmoDesigner enables the novice user to create simple but powerful call flows, while also providing the flexibility to perform sophisticated tasks, such as integration to external CRM and knowledge base systems. Since CosmoDesigner is extensible, users can create customized blocks to meet their own individual requirements, eliminating the need to wait for future releases to deploy the functionality they need.

Because of its XML architecture, database dips into external systems occur entirely within the security confines of the data owner's environment, even when the call flow application is running on a network-based platform as a hosted service for multiple tenants. To facilitate integration, all of the information obtained during the course of a CosmoDesigner call flow is easily passed on to the agent receiving the call, and easily exposed to that agent's other applications.

Advantages of CosmoDesigner in Network-Hosted Contact Center On-Demand™ Deployments 

CosmoDesigner offers many benefits to both Service Providers and their tenants in network-based contact center on-demand deployments. For the Service Provider, the objective is cost reduction; for the tenant, the objective is security and control. CosmoDesigner is a win-win proposition for both.

Advantages of CosmoDesigner in Customer Premise Deployments 

All the benefits of CosmoDesigner that are available to Service Providers and their customers can be enjoyed by end user customers in premise based environments.