What is WebRTC? Think of it as a teleconferencing system built right into your browser! For some time now, call centers have been slowly integrating web chat functionality into the call center tool set. Visitors to the company website can click on a link and open a chat or “IM” session with the next available agent. This is a very powerful tool addition when properly implemented, but it reduces the communications process to a the linear, sequential medium of typing. Not much different than a email with the possible exception that you can “share a form” on the website between the agent and the web visitor. Some websites have voice enabled chat links and “click to talk to a customer service representative” usually results in a call back. Why not click and open a real time voice and video link with the call center? It is very possible to do this, but almost impossible without having the web visitor download a special “plug- in” and having proprietary voice gateways on your call center.
This is where WebRTC can play a major role in “peer to peer” communications. DrVoIP believes this technology has the capacity (excuse the pun) to redefine the communications landscape. Using WebRTC users are able to establish a real time voice and video communication channel without having to download an special software, or create a special user account! WebRTC leverages the recent trend in which the web browser IS the “application” and facilitates browser-to-browser communication, with no software downloads or registration needed. The web browsers themselves include all the capabilities needed to support real time voice and video communications. WebRTC standardizes communications between browsers, enabling audio and video communications, and data bridges to support text chat or file-sharing. For this reason it is an ideal solution to to enable customer care solutions that desire direct access to the call center!
Imagine your prime demographic prospect or client browsing your website from and Droid or IPhone and being able to open a real-time voice and video interaction with your call center based agent or representative! Talk about “point of sale”! The client no longer has to search for a call center number, or wait for a call back, but seamlessly adds a human sales or customer service resource within their current search reality! Chrome and Firefox have stable releases and others are quickly moving to address the emerging webRTC standard. Yes, we have the technology today to implement “person to person” communications models within the contact center, freely mixing the media streams from webRTC with the PSTN and SIP media streams already coming into your call center!
We used to say “never trust anyone over thirty” and that still seems to be the case. To many “old” people running call centers! There is a generation of folks out there that have never had a wire based phone, don’t want one and live in the very mobile world of ‘instant gratification”. They have been raised on wireless smartphones, the internet and “faceTime”. Much the way the broadcast television industry has been crushed by Video on Demand, YouTube and Netflix, your call center will be crushed if you don’t begin to understand the fundamental shift in communications technology that is reshaping the global business communications landscape. DrVoIP believes, the American Business communications landscape will be littered with the bleaching bodies of those call centers that fail to adopt WebRTC!
