The Old Frontier Ahead of Us
March 1, 2008
Discovering treasure is a rewarding experience in more ways than one. It's something of value that others seek as well, but you are lucky enough to have found it. Finding hidden treasure is even more exciting. Hidden treasure implies that someone or something is intentionally or inadvertently trying to keep it from view. It is even possible for great treasures to be hidden in plain sight by nothing more than the veil of unawareness.
For many years now Internet Protocol (IP) has been talked about and held in the highest regard as a technology of the future. The future that our predecessors spoke of is our current day. The uses for IP were at one time seen as things that did not exist, or that would be created and change the way applications and communications functioned. All of this has proven to be true, but as much as IP has created new things, it also improves old ones. The old things are still what they are, only better.
Call centers have been around for decades. These are places where people acting as processors of information receive inbound information for routing and resolution as well as generate outbound contact with other people for sharing and collecting information. Call centers can provide support for products and services as well as generate direct sales. Their purpose in the world is critical, but the value is lost in translation somewhere.
The term "Call Center" is to the point, but not very flattering. Part of that has to do with the word "call". Ever since IP and the Internet came along, anything that was "web-based", or has an "e" or an "i" in front of it (ecommerce, ibanking) became all the rage. Voice and calling services became old-school almost overnight. Along came VoIP, but the Internet got most of the credit even though it has little to nothing to do with Voice over Internet Protocol. Unless of course the voice call goes over the Internet, but that is not a given.
Through all of this transformation of "everything to IP" possibly one of the greatest opportunities for Voice Peering has been overlooked — a Call Center Grid. The reasons are numerous, the need is present and, best of all, almost every tool necessary is already built and available. There are only two things missing, awareness and execution. For those of you in the call center industry, what is about to happen is that magnificent transformation to unified IP communications that has already had an impact on the rest of the world. Treasure found.
Hunter Newby was chief strategy officer for telx at the time of this publishing.
Originally published in Internet Telephony magazine, March 2008 issue.
