December 1, 2015
Cisco recently named Mindsight one of only 28 UCCE Advanced Technology Providers in America. This highly exclusive partnership enables the Mindsight engineering team to design and deploy both Packaged Contact Center Enterprise as well as the complete Unified Contact Center Enterprise solutions throughout our service area. Only twenty-eight companies in the U.S. have earned the UCCE ATP, and we are one of just a handful headquartered in the Chicago area.
Mindsight and the Advanced Technology Provider Program
Cisco manufactures complex and sophisticated technologies, and their reputation is closely tied to the performance of the partners who deploy these products across the country. For that reason, the Advanced Technology Provider program seeks to prepare partners for the intricacies of products like UCCE and ensure each deployment will live up to Cisco’s high standards of excellence.
The bar for enrollment is set very high, and as such, becoming an Advanced Technology Provider is by invitation only. In the case of Mindsight, Chicago area Cisco representatives vouched for the quality of our engineering team, methodology, and culture. They described us as a prime example of the kind of company Cisco is looking for to design and deploy UCCE environments. With their recommendation, Cisco Systems invited Mindsight to apply for the program.
Even with an invitation, Mindsight was still required to fulfill a number of criteria. To start, designated personnel completed courses and examinations totaling nearly 450 hours. Cisco designed the educational program to prepare their partners to fill key implementation roles, including Account Manager (AM), Systems Engineer (SE), Deployment Engineer/TAC Support (DE/TS), Project Manager, Cicsco Unified Voice Portal (CVP) developer. From there, the Mindsight engineering team prepared a mock deployment to address the needs of an example customer profile. Now, Mindsight is one of the top UCCE Advanced Technology Providers in the U.S.
“With Unified Contact Center Enterprise in our solution set, Mindsight will be better able to serve our customers ever expanding contact center needs. I’m proud of the team we have put together and the quality of our engineering at Mindsight.”
— John Irey, Principal UCCE Consultant
UCCE Advanced Technology Providers: An Overview of Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise
Contact Center Enterprise:
Two Styles to Fit Varied Contact Center Sizes
Cisco UCCE is available in two styles, Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) and Packaged Contact Center Enterprise (PCCE). Each one is designed to expand upon the feature set of Unified Contact Center Express while also providing a solution for the largest of contact center deployments.
- UCCE: This complete version of the software is capable of supporting multiple contact center hubs with a combined total of up to 12,000 agents.
- PCCE: To occupy the small to mid-range enterprise market, Packaged Contact Center Express is ideal for contact centers of 1,200 agents or fewer. However, to account for company growth as well as future acquisitions and mergers, PCCE is best deployed in environments consisting of 100 to 600 agents.
Expanded and Exclusive Features of UCCE and PCCE: UCCE Advanced Technology Providers
While these contact center platforms address the needs of larger organizations, UCCE and PCCE also expand upon features existing in UCCX and introduce new ones altogether.
- Agent Greetings: Contact center agents are able to pre-record greeting statements for each call queue to which they are assigned. When a call comes through, the prerecorded greeting will play, and the agent can then naturally continue the conversation from there.
- Precision Routing: UCCE and PCCE include a much more sophisticated intelligent routing system. They will assess multiple dimensions of an agent’s skill set and then establish a hierarchy of importance for the incoming call. UCCE or PCCE will then search for an available agent that matches these required skills and work its way down the hierarchy until the best match is found.
- Robust Chat and Email Features: UCCX includes both standard email and chat components, but UCCE builds upon these contact methods with advanced features. Auto-replies based on time of day, chat sharing, automatic surveys, and more enable agents to better communicate and collaborate with customers and each other.
- Redundant Server Architecture: In a traditional contact center platform, queued calls are hosted on a server. Should that server fail, every waiting call is immediately dropped. Contact centers large enough to make use of UCCE are vital to the organizations they support, and these companies cannot afford to drop so many calls drop at once. UCCE deployments are constructed with a redundant server to shadow host the calls in the queue. Should the first server fail, there is a second waiting in the wings to maintain the queue.
- Multi-Queueing and Self-Service at the Network’s Edge: Large organizations often have branches or store locations in multiple cities, states, or even countries. Routing calls through the WAN from all these locations to a centralized contact center or hub would put significant strain on available bandwidth. UCCE allows the IVR system to address calls at a gateway near the call origin. It will only route calls to the main contact center if and when an agent’s involvement is required. This keeps the bandwidth demand low, while still providing a consistent customer experience.
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About Mindsight
Mindsight, a Chicago IT consultancy and services provider, is an extension of your team. Our culture is built on transparency and trust, and our team is made up of extraordinary people – the kinds of people you would hire. We’ve always prided ourselves in delivering the full spectrum of IT services and solutions, from design and implementation to support and management. Our highly-certified engineers and process-oriented excellence have certainly been key to our success. But what really sets us apart is our straightforward and honest approach to every conversation, whether it is for a local business or global enterprise. Our customers rely on our thought leadership, responsiveness, and dedication to solving their toughest technology challenges.