Bragado: There are, in fact, times when I need to spend more time with my family. For a week now, I have been accessing our network from my home. They can reach me via IM and I can send e-mails while doing tasks at home, responses are immediate and I am reachable as needed. Unified communication permits us to do business regardless of our location.

Baniqued: We do work remotely but this is very dependent on a good Internet connection.

Oscuro: Infrastructure is very necessary, especially telecommunications infrastructure, because there are times when broadband is available in the business district but not in the residential areas where you also really need it to work.

CWP: Vendors claim that UC not only increases productivity, it also has a direct benefit when embedded into important business applications such as a contact center. What benefits do you think could be gained by enabling contact center agents with UC functionality?

Bragado: We currently have 100 seats for our SEAIR and Tiger Airways call center operations. We are looking at having 2,000 seats by next year. Clearly, the growth of the company and the industry itself poses a scalability issue but, with the advent of unified communication, the headaches of upgrading major facilities are expected to be reduced, if not eliminated. This applies to setup and configuration works as well. Unified communication can make the call centers even more effective by integrating communication systems to the intranet to provide remote access to agents wherever they may be located. At one point in time, we seriously considered the idea of telecommuting so call agents can work from home. UC can make this a possibility.

Pascual: Actually that’s one good thing that UC can do for call centers because in other countries they already employ agents who work from home. So let’s say a mom who probably drops her kids off to school in the morning and does not have to do anything else in the morning can go back home, put her headset on, and be part of the call center. Then by one o’clock she logs off and picks up her kids.

Oscuro: For the big call centers, I would assume all of them already have some form of UC in place.

Pascual: Actually, in the Philippines, the majority of the call centers that I’m familiar with are basically the inbound/outbound call type. I believe there are only a few who are using unified communication now, but soon enough they will because we usually follow the industrialized countries. Call centers in Europe and the US already make use of unified communication to be able to resolve the calls at the first instance, they call it “resolution at first contact.” Imagine if an agent gets to resolve, let’s say a caller’s issue about his credit card right there and then so he does not have to call again. An agent could then move on to the next problem because the technology in unified communication allows the agent to settle the problem right then and there since he could readily connect, say a technical expert who can address the problem, through Web collaboration or other unified communication features.

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