What a CTI is and why it is the key to call center productivity

Call center, contact center, CTI, omnichannel, multiskill… If you have landed here, you are probably trying to make sense of these terms or looking for ways to make your customer service more productive. Let's start at the beginning.

What CTI means

CTI stands for Computer Telephony Integration: the integration of telephony with IT systems. In practice, a CTI is the software that lets a computer control calls (receive, place, transfer and record them) while showing the agent the customer's details, the script to follow and the outcome to log.

A modern contact center goes one step beyond classic CTI: besides voice, it handles WhatsApp, web chat, email and video from the same desktop and with the same routing rules. But the foundation is the same: joining communication with data.

How it used to work

Call centers existed long before CTI, but they worked very differently. Calls were dialled by hand from printed lists, and notes on each contact were pencilled onto those same lists. Keeping track of what had been called, who had answered and what to do next took an enormous amount of resources, and mistakes were constant.

If you are reading this and had never heard of it, you are new to the industry and probably holding your head in your hands.

What a CTI does for productivity

Broadly speaking, a CTI automates and digitises everything that used to be manual. That translates into several concrete gains:

• Automatic dialling. The system dials for the agent. In predictive mode it also works out how many calls to launch so that someone is always free when a customer picks up, without generating abandoned calls.
• Customer identification. When a call comes in, the customer's record is on screen before the agent answers. The agent knows who is calling, what they have bought and what happened at the last contact.
• Intelligent routing. Each call goes to the agent with the right skill (language, product, level), according to defined priorities and schedules.
• Scripts and dispositions. The agent follows a guide with the data to collect and closes each contact with a coded outcome. That is what later makes measurement possible.
• Recording and supervision. Every call is recorded and the supervisor sees in real time what is happening at each seat and in each queue.
• Reports. Performance by agent, campaign and time slot; contact and conversion rates; wait and handling times. Decisions based on data, not on gut feeling.

The three roles in a CTI

CTI platforms usually have different applications depending on who uses them and for what:

Agent

Needs a single screen with the call, the script, the customer record and, today, their WhatsApp or chat conversations too. The less they have to switch windows, the more contacts they handle and the fewer mistakes they make.

Supervisor

Needs to see the whole operation in real time: agents online, queues, service levels, campaign results. And to be able to act: listen to a call, whisper a hint to the agent or barge in.

Administrator

Configures campaigns, lists, skills, trunks and schedules. In a good CTI all of this is done from a panel, without touching the PBX or asking the vendor for a change.

What to ask before choosing a CTI

1. How long until it is live? If the answer is measured in months, be wary. A well-designed platform is configured in hours or days.
2. How is it licensed? Per concurrent agent is the fairest model for operations whose size changes with each campaign.
3. Are all channels included or sold as add-ons? WhatsApp, chat and email are often sold as extras that inflate the cost of every seat.
4. Can I use my own telephony carrier? A CTI that only works with the vendor's lines ties you to their rates.
5. Who provides support? There is a huge difference between talking to the people who build the software and talking to a three-tier help desk.
6. Where are my data and recordings? Under GDPR they should be in the European Union, and you should be able to export them whenever you want.

In short

A CTI is the central piece of any business where customer contact and service are core activities. Having one that is robust, efficient and well supported is a direct competitive advantage: more contacts per hour, a better customer experience and reliable data to decide with. That is exactly what we build at OCM with One Call Manager.