These are not technical questions but they stab at the heart of the burgeoning technical field of Computer Telephony Integration or CTI. Some years back, Chief Information Officers became acutely aware of the fact that a bad data communications system could negatively affect the bottom line and restrain the company from catching the competition. Today, a bad call handling system can have the same impact. Large and small companies alike want to meet seemingly conflicting challenges: 1. Personalize the call experience, which means understanding and fulfilling each individual callers` varied wants and needs. 2. Integrate the call handling function and related caller information with other data processing systems. 3. Keep costs down.

Computer Telephony Integration is the tight merger of telephone systems technology and computer processing technology for the purpose of achieving synergistic functional efficiencies. What`s that mean? It means that open computer platforms, such as the Windows-Intel one, continue to expand their economic advantage into everything and now it`s the telephone systems` turn.

STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY HAVE FINALLY CONVERGED
Why is this happening now? Several things have evolved to the point we are at today. First is the escalating power of the computer processor. Paraphrasing Moor`s law, computer processor power doubles every 18 months. That translates into an exponential growth in the capability of a general purpose processor which is found in millions of desk-top computers and servers. Moreover, there are hundreds of software companies and thousands of programmers writing off-the-shelf code that can provide flexible and economical systems or can make the development of complex custom systems easy.

Second, a specialized chip has evolved from making a doll talk to being able to interpret almost any human tongue - the Digital Signal Processor or DSP. They are high powered, specialized processors dedicated to handling and manipulating digitized wave forms, such as voice, fax, and video signals. Besides being powerful, they are programmable so a DSP at one point could be functioning as a modem signal processor and at another point functioning as a sound interpreter. This makes voice boards cheap and flexible and able to support analog and digital telephone lines for speech signal processing, modem and fax signal processing, text-to-speech systems, and eventually video signal processing.

Third, the telephony industry, led by Europe, is being dragged into the uncomfortable world of standards and open systems. The data processing world has been there, with some successes, for awhile - and it is good. The very large telephone systems manufacturers have issued well documented specifications describing how computers should talk to their products. This is called being "open" as opposed to the situation some years ago where their proprietary doors were locked tight. Beyond this Open Architecture Interface, or AI, is universal standards which all telephone systems, voice boards, programs and computers support. We are not there yet but CSTA, TSAPI, TAPI, JAI and other such standards are evolving rapidly, similar to the state of LAN standards around the early `80s.

The early adopters of CTI were the large companies which could benefit from the improvements in call handling at their large call centers where hundreds of agents take thousands of calls. Information about an incoming caller, such as the automatic detection of the caller`s telephone number, can be passed from the telephone system to a computer which then "pops" a screen of customer information to the agent`s terminal thereby reducing the time it takes to handle the call. Such small improvements in efficiency paid well in these large centers. It had to because the technology at the time was expensive - running $2000 to $3000 per seat or agent. This was due to the proprietary nature of the telephone systems used and the mainframe-based applications needed to drive them. All specialized. Today, the interfaces are open and the computers are small, LAN-based or even desk-top based.

The ability to increase productivity through the use of cheap computer technology is nothing new, in fact, some economist have suggested that this process has helped to reduce inflation in the `90s by one or two percentage points. So, it should not be a surprise to find out that these techniques can work with telephone systems to improve productivity and reduce costs.

CTI INTEGRATES THE BACK OFFICE SYSTEMS WITH THE CALL CENTER
An example of how CTI can work is as follows. Using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology, a caller can be asked to enter information via the touch tone key pad, such as their social security number, type of product purchased, or the level of the service contract under which they fall. This information, gathered without involving an operator, is then used by a computer to route the call to the most knowledgeable agent or even to the best service center to handle the call while the customer`s history is located, forwarded, and simultaneously displayed to the answering agent. The agent handles the customer`s problem efficiently through a knowledge-based, on-line system and then the agent electronically sends a record of the call`s results to a another computer database for later auditing. While handling the customer`s service call, the computer system pops another window on the agent`s screen regarding a product upgrade sale going on for preferred customers, such as the caller, until the end of the day. The same service agent can verify the caller`s credit rating, check to be sure the product is still in stock, close a sale by notifying another computer for charges and shipping, and initiate a confirmation fax to the customer fulfilling the request. This service call resulted in a sale and a happy customer with all the back-end paper work completed all within minutes. The agent is now ready for another call.

What company does not want to use all available resources to sell products and do business. More direct, if your company`s competitor is able to respond to a perspective customer`s Web-based, mouse-click-initiated request to buy a product with a rapid on-screen, live-operator voice and operator controlled screen images and your company can`t, then this important and growing market is lost. Technology resources such as fax-on-demand, interactive voice response, text-to-speech, Audiotext, predictive dialing, skills-based call routing, database access, application generators, telephony application testers, and unified messaging are available today. Also, client-server LAN based systems are at the forefront of this CTI technology wave.

However, throwing technology everywhere is seldom the answer to any problem and this is certainly the case with CTI products today. The proper approach to take is to step back, define the situation, determine how it can be improved, and apply the right technology, in the right manner, at the right time. This sounds obvious but in a number of companies it is difficult to do. Why, because systems and people are embedded.

IMPLEMENTATION INVOLVES REENGINEERING BUSINESS PROCESSES
The first big step toward implementing CTI successfully is to truly understand and define the business goals. The larger the organization the more complex are their processes - some companies may even find that because of the flexibility of CTI technologies today that each department has already implemented a mini-call center on their own. Therefore, a bigger assessment often has to be made within the organization as to the best way to handle communications, either with customers, suppliers, or internally. This starts with an assessment of how the communication process of concern is currently being handled. Business process reengineering is not pretty, but it leads to improved performance, productivity, and the best use of technology. Some companies use technology well. Others, just use it.

Along with defining the business process needs, a good understanding of the capabilities of the technology available today is the next step. What are the technologies? Who makes them? Are they stable? Where is the industry going? What is the state of standards for hardware and software? Where do you turn for information about these areas in the future? How do you track results? These are the questions you should be asking. Unfortunately, some people just want to know how much does it cost per seat.

Copright 1999, McGuire Consulting. All rights reserved.

A version of this article with relevant diagrams/illustrations can be found at: http://www.mcguireconsulting.com