For contact centers these days, the rush is in improving technology and trying to land a competitive advantage. There have been plenty of technology firms willing to step up and attempt to sell shovels in this gold rush. CentralTouch Technology's WebRTC Unified Communication Contact Center is one recent effort, taking InGate Systems Technology to make a powerful new tool for the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market.

The CentralTouch system is said to be best-suited for contact centers with between two and 200 agents, offering not only voice and video chatting systems, but also Web-based chat, email systems and even media server systems. A set of Web-based real time communications systems (WebRTC) tools allows for much of this functionality to be brought directly to Web browsers, particularly Google Chrome and Mozilla (News - Alert) Firefox. Considering that studies have recently found that website visits come ahead of calls to a contact center, bringing in technologies that take advantage of that point should be considered a smart idea. The CentralTouch system also allows for switching between communication channels as needed, and even collaboration tools to allow contact center agents to bring in experts.

But the CentralTouch system was also built largely on the back of a session initiation protocol (SIP) infrastructure thanks to quite a bit of support from InGate. InGate's Companion WebRTC-SIP Gateway (News - Alert), as well as its Q-Turn technology, combine to offer the necessary systems to allow the browser-based communications. InGate Systems' president, Steven Johnson (News - Alert), commented on why CentralTouch turned to InGate in building its system, saying, “We are proud to have InGate’s WebRTC & SIP Companion Gateway and SBC as well as Q-Turn technology as key parts of CentralTouch’s fine Contact Center solution. Allowing high-quality Web browser-based voice and video communication, both for the customers and call agents, is a mission for InGate and we are convinced that the ability for enterprises to have context-sensitive buttons and click-to-call links on their websites, will be a great success.”

It's well-known how important the contact center is to business operations these days. A positive contact center experience can contribute to a better overall customer experience, which helps turn customers into repeat customers. Being able to offer preferred customer-contact methods is a particularly bright idea. Customers have the options they desire, and in turn, offer the contact center a way to keep up with demand. Resources are often tight for SMBs, and a large-scale system for a multichannel contact approach was out of reach, until now.

The CentralTouch system is likely to prove a welcome addition to a lot of smaller contact centers out there, and when it comes out for general use in the third quarter of this year, it should do brisk business. Only time will tell if that's the case, but it certainly seems to have what it takes on the surface.