Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Solution Reference ...

IPT: Multi-Site with Centralized Call Processing
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Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise 7.x SRND
Chapter 2 Deployment Models
In this deployment model, shown with Unified IP IVR for queuing and treatment, it might be desirable
to restrict calls arriving at a site to be handled by an agent within that site, but this is not required. By
restricting calls to the site where it arrived, the following conditions apply:
VoIP WAN bandwidth is reduced for calls going to agents from the ingress voice gateway.
Calls will still cross the VoIP WAN during the time they are in queue or are receiving treatment from
the centralized Unified IP IVRs.
Customer service levels for calls arriving into that site might suffer due to longer queue times and
handle times.
Longer queue times can occur because, even though an agent at another site is available, the Unified
CCE configuration may continue to queue for an agent at the local site only.
Longer handle times can occur because, even though a more qualified agent exists at another site,
the call may be routed to a local agent to reduce WAN bandwidth usage.
In order to restrict a call to the site at which it arrived in this deployment model, it is necessary to create
separate skill groups for agents at each location. In order to route a call to any agent in a given skill
regardless of location, the location-specific skill groups can be combined using an enterprise skill group.
It is important for deployment teams to carefully assess the trade-offs between operational costs and
customer satisfaction levels to establish the right balance on a customer-by-customer basis. For example,
it may be desirable to route a specific high-profile customer to an agent at another site to reduce their
queue time and allow the call to be handled by a more experienced representative, while another
customer may be restricted to an agent within the site where the call arrived.
a Unified CCE deployment may actually use a combination of centralized and distributed voice
gateways. The centralized voice gateways can be connected to one PSTN carrier providing toll-free
services, while the distributed voice gateways can be connected to another PSTN carrier providing local
phone services.
Inbound calls from the local PSTN could be both direct inward dial (DID) and contact center calls. It is
important to understand the requirements for all inbound and outbound calling to determine the most
efficient location for voice gateways. Identify who is calling, why they are calling, where they are calling
from, and how they are calling.
In the traditional Unified CCE model, with multi-site deployments and distributed voice gateways, the
Unified ICM pre-routing capability can also be used to load-balance calls dynamically across the
multiple sites. A list of PSTN carriers that offer Unified ICM pre-routing services can be found in the
Unified ICM product documentation available at
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/icm/
In multi-site environments where the voice gateways have both local PSTN trunks and separate toll-free
trunks delivering contact center calls, the Unified ICM pre-routing software can load-balance the
toll-free contact center calls around the local contact center calls. For example, suppose you have a
two-site deployment where Site 1 currently has all agents busy and many calls in queue from locally
originated calls, and Site 2 has only a few calls in queue or maybe even a few agents currently available.
In that scenario, you could have the Unified ICM instruct the toll-free provider to route most or all of
the toll-free calls to Site 2. This type of multi-site load balancing provided by the Unified ICM is
dynamic and automatically adjusts as call volumes change at all sites. Note that Unified ICM pre-routing
is not supported in the System Unified CCE deployment models; it is an option only for traditional
Unified CCE or the parent/child models where the Unified ICM parent would have the pre-routing
interface to the PSTN.
Just as in the two previous deployment models, much variation exists in the number and types of Unified
ICM, Cisco Unified CallManager, and Unified IP IVR or Unified CVP servers; LAN/WAN
infrastructure; voice gateways; PSTN connectivity; and so forth.
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