A Lucent G3 switch does a fine job of slicing and dicing DNIS, a limited number of ANI, time of day, and agent availability (with skills etc.) This is great as far as it goes, however notice business data is completely absent. One can use different DNIS and Vector combinations to differentiate classes of contact. Take the example of the cellular user who calls over a land line and is asked to enter their cell phone number. An IVR could look up the client and transfer to a skill tailored to the customer's value. So far this is no big deal. The picture gets a lot more complicated
when multiple media (email,web, chat, etc.) and multiple sites are blended with voice interactions. Under these circumstances Lucent starts to fire of phantom calls all over the place to see (via CTI)where the EAS routing takes the interaction. Gradully there are not enough DNIS and Vector combinations to reasonably indicate the routing significance of an interaction. Interactions start looking like binary machine language programming. A good Genesys IR approach would label interactions with descriptive text variables. The strategy would then route all types of interactions based on two or three simple variables in a consistant and far easier to understand manner. Telephony signaling was never intended to carry a great deal of "data content". The cost of entry for Genesys is fairly high, however this is offset by the enterprise view of interactions and the considerably more powerful (data driven), clearer and easier routing tools. Add fundamentally important TServer "attached data changed events" for serious desktop integration and the large integrated suite of applications and you have an outstanding package. The Lucent and Nortel offerings cling onto telephony signaling concepts which are inherently too weak for data driven contact management.
Good luck,
Rob Townsend
