Internet ACDs Increase Customer Contact Choices
C
all it what you want – Web call through, Web ACD, Internet ACD, PC-based ACD, or something else – it’s still the act of selecting a Web site’s "click me to connect" button, transparently going through a software-based ACD, and ending up at an appropriate (and possibly remote) agent. Internet ACDs could be a killer app, but not until after the year 2000, industry insiders agree. Like its other Internet cousins, they say, the end user features are cool, but its selling point will be reliablility and good quality of service…Real World Examples
… Most of the other examples lie on the developers’ own sites, such as CosmoCom. Even flashier than the (competition) button, the CosmoCom animated GIF flashes "CosmoCall -- Talk To Us -- Click Here -- Try It Now" and, like the other sites, asks users for basic data before it will process the request. Golf4Less.com, one of the nation’s largest commercial golf equipment Web sites, recently implemented the CosmoCom solution in its call center. "We’ve been looking for a solution like this for a long time," said Tim Reha, the company’s director of e-commerce.
Reha noted that golfers share many of the same demographic statistics as people who are early adopters of technology – typically, white, educated males who hold management positions. He also noted that golf equipment is expensive, so buyers are "willing to go to certain lengths" to save money, perhaps even upgrading their PCs. Since the company often can’t advertise product prices on the Web site, he said, the Internet ACD link "solves a lot of problems for us."
While the experts ponder new ways to refine bandwidth, latency, packet loss, and other quality of service issues, it’s easy to think of more solutions for a technology that essentially amounts to free data and fax-enabled videophones, perhaps someday crammed into PDA technology to make the ultimate wireless communicator. Until then, applications included help desks; electronic commerce, banking, and stock trading; dining, entertainment, sports, and travel reservations; real estate; distance learning; telecommuting and conferencing; multimedia kiosks for shopping malls and tourist attractions; and, of course, general customer service applications.
The above excerpt is from the article 'Internet ACD Increase Customer Contact Choices" which originally appeared in the September 1998 issue of CTI Magazine.