Communicator or Hardphones for Call center?

[Jayd000007]

Hi all,

what are pro and cons of using IP Communicator instead of IPphones in a call center environement (IPCC Enterprise)??

thank you

[adignan]

CONS:

- Must ensure QOS is done properly as VOIP traffic will be on your data VLAN

- Contingent on PC for Call Center to be up. PC Issues could render your CC useless.

- Desktop Landscape - Most contact center agents have multiple applications they manage and adding another one is annoying.

PROS:

- Smaller footprint

Personally, I am not a fan but thats just me.

adignan - CDW

*please rate helpful posts

[Riccardo Bua]

My personal take is that softphones could be a good replacement for a hardphone, specially in scenarios where space is critical, but I would always have a hardphone available for disaster recevoery scenarios.

Regards,

Riccardo

[Naveen Raj Janardhan]

Please forgive me for breaking into this thread like this.. but for some reason could not withstand asking a question pertaining to this thread.

I was in a CIPT class and the instructor told us that using a softphone is equvalent to using upto 5 hardphones...how true is this statistic?

[Riccardo Bua]

Hi,

what you are talking about is the device weight, in the device weight calculation the softphone is compared to the heaviest resource consuming phone on the CCM, the 796x or similar, that have a device weight of 5, there were phones with a device weight as little as one, old phones, but this is not the case with most of the current phones, verify with the IPT Resource calculator.

Regards,

Riccardo

[todd.vinciguerra]

What issues could I expect to see if no QOS is in place? Also, are there known issues calling from an IP Communicator to a 7985 phone? During testing across our WAN I have had very clean and clear calling between IP Communicators, but pixellated video on the 7985 where the IP Communicator never had an issue.