A global industrial parts supplier: a hybrid Cisco and Genesys Cloud CX contact centre

The supplier's customers call, write and message about an extraordinary catalogue: literally millions of parts and industrial components. Its contact centre needed modern voice, email and web messaging, analytics that could make sense of conversations full of part numbers and technical terms, and service for German-speaking customers from a team whose working language is English.

At the same time, the business ran a working on-premises Cisco platform, with its own IVR, session border controllers and back-office users on extensions. Replacing everything at once would have added risk without adding value. The question was how to bring in Genesys Cloud CX for the contact centre while keeping the Cisco estate doing what it did well.

Working on behalf of a UK Genesys reseller partner, QVCCS designed a hybrid solution. The client chose BYOC Cloud but kept its carrier SIP trunks terminating on its local session border controllers, which route traffic up to Genesys Cloud CX over a private SIP trunk. The Cisco IVR and the Genesys Cloud IVR work hand in hand: Cisco passes the relevant calls to Genesys Cloud CX, and other traffic stays local on Cisco as before.

Because both platforms share that local connection, internal and external calls move between them without crossing the public telephone network a second time. A three-digit dialling plan in Genesys Cloud CX lets contact centre agents reach back-office colleagues on their Cisco extensions, so consultations, conferences and transfers between the contact centre and the rest of the business are as simple as dialling an extension.

1. Hybrid design: BYOC Cloud over a private SIP trunk from the local session border controllers
2. More than 20 inbound voice flows with enhanced flow outcomes for analytics and reporting
3. Web messaging with a digital bot flow in English and German, plus email
4. Real-time translation through an AppFoundry partner application
5. Speech and text analytics with sentiment, and customised topics and phrases
6. Workforce management, gamification and an opt-in CSAT survey in voice and messaging

German-speaking customers can message in German: the digital bot flow serves them in their own language, and when they reach an agent, real-time translation from an AppFoundry partner application lets them keep writing German while the agent reads and replies in English. Voice customers move through more than 20 inbound flows, each reporting enhanced flow outcomes, so the business can see not only how calls ended but which paths through the IVR succeeded.

The client fully adopted Genesys Cloud speech and text analytics with sentiment analysis. Customised topics and phrases extend the general programme to recognise the language of a business with millions of parts, so trends and themes surface from real conversations rather than generic vocabulary. Customers can opt in to a CSAT survey after a call or a messaging session, and workforce management and gamification support the team behind it all.

The project was successful, and was completed on time and on budget despite its inherent complexity. It was so successful that the client moved straight into a second phase of innovation on Genesys Cloud CX, building on the hybrid foundation rather than revisiting it.

• One hybrid contact centre across on-premises Cisco and Genesys Cloud CX
• Calls between the platforms without re-crossing the public telephone network
• German-speaking customers served in German by English-speaking agents
• Speech and text analytics tuned to millions of parts, and a second phase already under way

Not every move to the cloud has to be all or nothing. By respecting what the existing Cisco estate did well and connecting it properly, rather than replacing it for the sake of it, the project brought the contact centre onto Genesys Cloud CX with less risk and less disruption. Careful telephony design, the right partner application for translation and analytics tuned to the business's own vocabulary did the rest.