Call Center Software Featured Article

Desktop Phones Vs. Softphones for Contact Centers

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor

As contact centers look to see how they can gain efficiencies and deploy new technologies such as IP and SIP trunking, the question almost inevitably rises whether to replace their traditional desktop phones with software or softphones, or keep them or buy newer models. The issue also arises with home-based agents. Both methods have their pros and cons: desktop phones.

Softphones offer numerous advantages including lower upfront hardware and ongoing support costs, easy integrated on-screen control, less desktop real estate and the ability to be deployed on laptops and remote devices. They also integrate easily with unified communications functionality such as instant messaging, e-mail and presence.

On the other hand hard/desktop phones are arguably more reliable—key when the objective is to enable the highest quality customer-retaining experience. This is especially important in home offices where even when there is high QoS on voice over IP the softphone interface adds that one more junction point where quality can slip. Yet softphones may need fewer need-to-be-supported components.

For more insights into hard/deskphones versus softphones TMCnet recently interviewed Steve Kaish (News - Alert), CosmoCom vice president of product management and marketing, and Ellwood Neuer, director of solutions engineering at Noble Systems.

TMCnet: Are you supporting/providing equal, more or less hard/desk phones? Softphones? Which ones are you seeing being used at formal contact centers? At agents’ homes?

SK: CosmoCom (News - Alert) customers use three primary mechanisms for voice delivery: softphone, hard IP phone and “any phone.” The “any phone” option enables a call to be delivered to any phone number, whether it is on the public network or an extension on a private telephone network.  All three delivery mechanisms can be controlled by the CosmoDesk browser-based call control client. 

About 50 percent of our agents are using the “any phone” option.  Among the rest of the users, we see an equal mix of SIP phone and softphone use. Home agents are predominantly “anyphone” or softphone users, because it eliminates the need to manage special equipment at home.

EN: Noble Systems’ (News - Alert) clients are primarily using soft phones for Work from Home (WFH) agents and existing hard phone in call/contact center environments. When a new (green field) contact center is being opened, the decision to go with soft phones is more typical since there is significant cost savings.

TMCnet: What are the whys behind the trends you are seeing?

SK: The “anyphone” solution is a popular way to get started because it can be quickly deployed in a virtual or hosted environment without any dependency on the quality of service on the IP network. The IP delivery options are more popular with customers who have a mature and reliable data network, and adoption is growing as customers get more sophisticated with managing their LAN and WAN infrastructure. Customers have the flexibility to start with an “any phone” solution and migrate some or all of the user bases to IP delivery over time.

EN: In the office, people are used to having a physical or hard phone on the desk. The rapidly decreasing cost of hard phones has also prompted an increase in usage. Utilizing soft phones for WFH agents is easier to support remotely compared to hard phones. Soft phones will use the VPN created for the desktop application while a hard phone may require a SIP-aware firewall or other hardware component to be installed at the remote/WFM agent location.

TMCnet: What recent and what in the pipeline applications do you have to improve hard and/or soft phones and what are the benefits?

SK: Last year we introduced CosmoPhone, a hard phone designed for use by regular agents, informal agents (i.e. subject matter experts), and back-office personnel. The optional CosmoDesk PC application is fully synchronized with CosmoPhone, enabling each user to perform complete call control from either the phone or the PC, and to switch seamlessly between them. CosmoPhone-compatible devices are available from a number of leading phone manufacturers.

EN: The Noble solution has supported hard and soft phones for more than a decade; indirectly via IP/PBX (News - Alert) and directly for the past five years with the support of SIP natively on the Noble platform.