Customer Interaction Center 

Purpose

The Customer Interaction Center (CIC) application offers customer service organizations robust call center functionality and a highly customizable design. The CIC application enables agents to:

·         Process inbound, and simple outbound, telephone calls from customers and other business partners using Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) technology as middleware

·         Seamlessly process any business transaction

 

The ability to view the state of any call participant and extensive call logging support inbound and outbound call processing.

CIC supports business transaction processing with a full range of telephony features, such as screen pop, automatic number identification (ANI), and soft phone controls.

Agent productivity is enhanced with CIC’s Action Box, Business Data Display, and the highly customizable design of CIC. The design allows personalization for agent skill and business processes.

Implementation Considerations

CIC requires CTI middleware to function as a call center. CIC supports a variety of CTI middleware products, as well as telephony servers and switches. CIC also supports interactive voice response (IVR) systems.

Integration with other ERP System components gives agents total access to customer information and customer business transactions. Business transactions that an agent has access to are defined through customizing. Examples include creating a service notification, updating a customer address, changing employee information, and checking the status of a delivery.

Features

Primary features of CIC include:

·        Telephony controls integrated with easy access to business transactions
As an integrated call center application, CIC provides agents complete access to ERP business transactions. CIC supports business transaction processing and a full range of telephony features.

·        Ability to view call state
This feature allows the agent to view the state of any party participating in a call at the agent's extension, for example, whether a party is active, on hold, muted, or participating in a conference call.

·        Extensive call logging
CIC performs comprehensive call logging including activities performed by agents, events occurring in the background, and business transactions.

·        Total customer information access
CIC provides agents complete access to customer information and related business transactions.

·        Integration with interactive voice response (IVR)
CIC supports interactive voice response (IVR) systems, which capture call-attached data. Call-attached data is not only the data collected through an IVR before a call reaches an agent but also data added by a previous agent during a call.

·        Increased agent productivity via Action Box and Business Data Display
These two features work together to display customer-related information for the agent and to enable the agent to navigate to and perform any business transaction in the SAP system.

Companies can use CIC in a variety of business scenarios including sales, service, collections, or human resources.  One company might use CIC in an inbound sales center, where agents enter sales orders, answer delivery inquiries, create return material authorizations, or update customer addresses.  In this scenario, agents could take leads for salespeople to call. 

Another company might use CIC to register service requests for internal or external customers.  In an integrated call center, all of these activities mentioned above might be occurring. 

Constraints

This application offers a wide range of functions. However, it is not integrated with the Internet or email for this release.