Since 2018 Belarusian Railway provides information services to its passengers through kiosks deployed on railway stations.
An online self-service application allows them to check the timetable, find the right route and calculate its price.
But what if a client needs to learn about transfer rules and railway services? Still passengers need an option to talk to a live representative.
And this is how it works…
There is a “Live assistance” button embedded into the self-service app which makes a video call to a remote representative using the kiosk camera, mic and speakerphone.
All the video calls are processed by a contact center software with RichCall on top of it. Queuing, call routing and reporting features are provided by a contact center software while video and collaboration goes through RichCall which also records all interactions.
Some figures:
- 24 self-service kiosks with live video assistance option
- 12-seat contact center
- 300 video calls daily on average with up to 600 calls during the peak time
In addition to video calls contact center agents enjoy the “co-browsing” feature allowing them to guide the client through the kiosk application .
So what are the benefits?
1. Self-service saves time by decreasing the total amount of staff needed to resolve customer issues;
2. Having all support staff in one place simplifies quality management and agent training.
3. Co-browsing helps to solve app-related issues faster.
4. Video and collaboration features improves the company image and customer loyalty.
5. Video allows supporting hearing-impaired passengers on any railway station.
6. Deploying several kiosks on large stations helps reduce passenger queues.
New features:
1. Client UI – configurable width of the widget
The widget width (including size of the video) is now configurable to better fit the website content and business case.
2. Configurable service availability time
You can configure service availability time including weekends and holidays.
3. Agent UI – client bandwidth monitoring
The agent can now see the client bandwidth for audio and video.
4. New mode “Live assistant for kiosk” is implemented
See the live demo at https://richcall.io/interactive-video-kiosk/
5. Video call forwarding
When the call is forwarded to another agent RichCall session follows the call (external PBX).
6. CSAT-2
New customer satisfaction metric support is implemented.
RichCall 3.7 is something that we worked on for more than 6 months!
Check out the main features of the new release:
1. Client UI – video on-hold configurable by admin
Admin is able to configure advertising video which plays when the client waits in a queue or the call is put on-hold.
2. Video kiosk edition – remote printer and scanner control
RichCall-powered videokiosks can be equipped with a printer and a scanner, fully controlled by a remote agent.
3. Agent UI – sending co-browsing request to a client
Agent is now able to send the co-browsing request and the client will just need to click the “Accept” button to share his browser.
4. Client UI – configurable pre-call survey
Configure a pre-call survey to gain useful information about the customer and the case even before a session starts.
5. License details available for admin
More info on the license is now available for admin.
6. Advanced audio settings
Admin can control the usage of various codecs depending on the PBX RichCall integrates with; the codecs supported are: OPUS, G722, G729, PCMU, PCMA.
As Cisco announced the end-of-sale for Cisco Remote Expert Mobile lots of our partners implementing UCCX/UCCE projects asked us to provide an equivalent replacement for Cisco Remote Expert Mobile/Remote Expert Cobrowse.
So here is the Cisco REM and RichCall for Cisco feature comparison matrix.
| Feature | Cisco REM | RichCall for Cisco |
| Collaboration Features | ||
| 2-way voice (click-to-call for website) | yes | yes |
| 1- or 2-way video | yes | yes |
| application sharing | yes | yes |
| co-browsing | yes | yes |
| remote control of co-browsing | yes | no, read only co-browsing |
| annotation | yes | no |
| cursor spotlight | yes | yes |
| masking sensitive data | yes | yes |
| document push | yes | yes |
| pictures push with annotation | no | yes |
| Application Server and Media Engine | ||
| WebRTC standards-based video for supported browsers | yes | yes |
| HTTP-to-SIP signaling conversion | yes | yes |
| HTTP secure socket through firewall and reverse proxy | yes | yes |
| Residing at the network edge (DMZ) | yes | yes |
| Video transcoding includes VP8 to and from H.264 | yes | yes |
| Audio transcoding includes Opus HD to G.711 and G.711 to G.729 | yes | yes |
| STUN/TURN support | yes | yes |
| Integration with Cisco Collaboration and Contact Center components | ||
| Cisco UCCX/UCCE/PCCE/HCS-CC | yes | yes |
| Gadget for Cisco Finesse | yes | yes |
| Deployment with Cisco UCM only | yes | yes |
| Use cases supported | ||
| Click-to-collaborate for website | yes | yes |
| Escalate phone call to a collaboration session | no | yes |
| Remote mobile camera sharing | no | yes |
| Video kiosks | no | yes |
| Misc | ||
| Deployment model | on-prem only | cloud and on-premise |
| SDK’s | yes | no, to be developed |
| Multitenancy for BPO and hosted contact centers | yes | yes |
For almost 1 year the “House Construction Savings Bank of Kazakhstan» partners with Aurus to offer visual support service to its clients.
The first major use case for video chat is sales interactions with customers. Each page of the Bank’s website has a “Video call” button embedded, which establishes a video-enabled collaborative session with a contact center agent just in one click.
“Of course it affects sales and customer loyalty” – says Erlan Abdykayev, the Director of Project Manegment Dept, – “First, a client doesn’t need to look for the contact details, dial the number and interact with IVR. Second, the co-browsing feature allows us to show how to work with Internet banking software and reduce the time to resolve“.
The video support button is also embedded into Internet-banking web applications. The co-browsing feature allows the client to share his webpage with the agent and get a visual assistance on how to complete the transaction. This tool significantly reduces the time needed to support existing users.
Erlan Abdykayev – “We already process several hundreds of videochat interactions daily and we’re going to use this channel in other customer service scenarios. For example we’re going to use identity verification video calls to allow our NEW customers to purchase online without even meeting the bank representative“.
About the Bank
“House Construction Savings Bank of Kazakhstan” JSC is the only bank in the country implementing housing construction savings system. HCS system is intended for improvement of housing conditions of people through attracting funds of depositors to housing construction deposits and granting them with housing loans.
Hire Slow, Fire Fast 🙂
I am personally a fan of Trollope – he literally reinvented Cisco Collaboration business burying failed projects merciless and strengthening the cloud strategy. But I guess we can assume Amy Chang is also a very bold female who continues Trollope’s initiatives.
I was recently contacted by a Cisco guy asking about our video and co-browsing for UCCX and I wondered why not use Cisco Remote Mobile Expert and guess what? They shutting it down!
Cisco Remote Mobile Expert was first introduced in 2015. I believe it was built by a tiny collaboration team Assemblage acquired by Cisco in 2014. It was quite a high-tech solution (WebRTC, HTML5, co-browsing and all that stuff) integrated into Cisco Finesse desktop.
And still Chang stopped it – https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/customer-collaboration/remote-expert-mobile/eos-eol-notice-c51-741854.html
The migration option is quite controversial – existing REM customers should consider migrating to Cisco Customer Journey Platform (former BroadSoft Customer Journey Platform) but I failed to find WebRTC and co-browsing features in its datasheets.
Why?
IMHO, Cisco is good in platforms, but not always in applications. They build (or acquire) one of the best communication platforms on the market AND they support the ecosystem of solution partners which use their developer tools to build various apps on top. Examples:
REM is an app. Without any API and customization capabilities offered. But there are way too much various business cases for a web-collaboration with customer. Therefore the software should provide tons of tiny features covering the needs of all customers. Not a platform approach.
Ok, so you need to enable post call surveys on your Cisco UCCX. There are several approaches depending on the software you currently use and your requirements to surveys.
Hopefully you’re using Cisco UCCX 11 and higher with Cisco Finesse and in that case you can confugure the Post Call Treatment native feature of UCCX.
When enabled, it redirects the client to the pre-configured DN after the agent hangs up.
IMPORTANT: the agent must use the Finesse End button rather than his IP phone.
More info on UCCX post call treatment – https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-express/119428-technote-uccx-00.html
In case you are still using CAD you can add a button using CDA that performs the Blind Transfer action to the required DN.
You need some app to receive the transferred call and interview the customer. And here you have several options depending on your requirements.
If your goal is just to allow your clients rate your agents by pressing a digit on the phone (DTMF), you may use Aurus PhoneUP Call and Screen Recording software for UCCX.
It supports the Dictaphone feature which answers the incoming calls, plays the pre-recorded message (like “Please leave your feedback”) and then records the voice of the client until he disconnects. In the next version it will also record DTMF tones sent by the client.
So it’s not a post call survey app, it is a call recording software which can ALSO be used to configure a SIMPLE “voice of the customer” feature. And it doesn’t cost anything – the free PhoneUP promo bundle contains a 3-seat call recording license.
If you need your survey to have multiple questions, organized in a tree then:
1. You may create a UCCX script for your survey. This will require special UCCX programming skills, though there are several examples available like this one.
2. If you use some contact center quality management bundle from major vendors you may have this feature on-board.
3. You may google for a special app from 3-rd party vendors.
This script was created to upload prompts to UCCX for work purposes.
You can download the script from GitHub.
This script can only upload files, you should convert prompt files to the required audio format previously.
The upload functionality is implemented as a shell script. It contains basic cURL, so rewriting it for Windows is quite straightforward.
Upload UCCX prompts via REST Api.
Prompts should be converted to valid audio format (8kbit mono U-law).
Keys by order:
python3 uccxpu.py -f -a testupload.wav -u uccxadmin -p uccxadminpassword -d default 10.10.10.10
Uploading is implemented as a shell script. But it should be no big deal to port it on Windows, it uses a cURL with several parameters, so if you have free time, go ahead.
This post is a translation and an extension to this post – the script was made by the author as well.
We’ve been working on this free WebRTC to SIP gateway for several months and are happy to release it into the wild.
We think it’s more valuable, than other WebRTC to SIP Gateways, because it:
In a nutshell, this is a free version of RichCall without video. If you would like to see how RichCall works with video, schedule a demo and let one of us show you everything..
Here’s what we have initially:
To get CVP statistics data, you should configure both databases as Data Sources for CUIC server. Open CUIC web interface, select Data Source tab and click Create to add a new data source. On the page that appears, enter the connection parameters:
After configuring all the parameters, click Test Connection to check the connection to the database. If the test was successful, it will show the Online status:
Now save the configuration. Repeat the process to configure the connection to the callback database. If everything is correct, both data sources will have the Online status:
After the Data Sources are configured, import the reporting templates for CVP. They can be downloaded from the CVP server (C:\Cisco\CVP\CVP Reporting Templates):
For example, let’s import CVP Call Detail:
Select the file to be imported and select the CUIC folder the imported report should be saved to:
There may be an error during the import. That means you should select a Data Source for the report. Let’s fix it:
The imported report will appear in CUIC:
Now run the report and apply the required filters:
As you can see, integrating CUIC with CVP Reporting isn’t that complicated. Note that in earlier CVP versions the report database name may be different (Cisco documentation contains the default name cvp_db).
This article was translated from the guide on getting CVP reports in CUIC by Dmitry Benda.
