Verizon Business, a premier provider of advanced global communications and information technology (IT) solutions, announced that it has added Internet protocol capability to its Verizon Web Center service, enabling businesses to more effectively communicate with customers using both traditional and IP telephony.

Available this month, IP Web Center, a hosted contact center solution, will allow companies to quickly start up or expand their customer communications operations in response to rapidly changing business plans or business continuity requirements.

"Verizon Business is marrying its IP and contact center services expertise to deliver one of the industry's first end-to-end IP contact center solutions," said Nancy Gofus, vice president of product management, Verizon Business. "By combining the power of Verizon Web Center with our Verizon voice-over-IP suite of services, businesses can reap the benefits of VoIP across their entire enterprise operations and achieve new capabilities and cost savings afforded by IP Telephony."

Verizon Web Center and Verizon Voice-over IP now share the same network infrastructure and customer premises equipment, so Verizon Business can activate a wide range of IP telephony services, including IP Web Center, Hosted IP Centrex, IP Integrated Access, IP Flexible T-1 and IP Trunking, at a given company location.

IP Web Center is ideally suited for mid-sized businesses that want to expand the functionality of their existing contact centers or for those that want to build new contact centers based on the latest, state-of-the-art customer communications technology. Since IP Web Center is a hosted solution that simply requires a phone and a broadband connection, large companies can also use the service for agents to make and receive calls virtually anywhere in the United States -- reducing the need to expand hard-wired contact center facilities.

According to Robin Goad, senior analyst at leading research firm Datamonitor, companies are increasingly moving to the IP contact center, taking advantage of an IP network environment to become more flexible and realize infrastructure cost savings. Additionally, IP encourages a virtually distributed call center with remote workers that is ideal for 24 x 7 global customer support. As a result, customer interactions are handled by the most appropriate agent regardless of location, helping to improve customer service and first-call resolutions and reduce call abandonment rates.

In addition, through a series of new Web Center enhancements, Verizon Business is making the jobs of agents, supervisors and administrators easier than ever before.

• Customer service agents can personalize their voice mail greetings to enhance customer interactions. Agents also can obtain more information about a customer's history and can supervise call transfers to speed customer support. Customers can now use IP technology to fully explore the benefits of remote agents with Web Center's inbound and outbound call handling capability, meaning geographically dispersed agents can now have a local presence from anywhere.
• Supervisors can better manage agents and improve service performance while controlling costs with new call-control screening and use of virtual network computing and guest access.
• Management can build business rules and routing strategies for all contact center projects through Verizon Business' addition of overflow capabilities, creation of guest supervisors, pre-announced caller information (whisper announcements) and enhanced statistical information.

Finally, Verizon Business' newly expanded pricing options let customers pay as they go for IP-enabled Web Center services; businesses only pay a monthly per agent price, plus call transport fees and associated IP phone equipment costs. This works well for companies that need to increase agent levels during busy holiday times and then reduce them when normal call levels resume. Businesses can also save on inbound toll-free costs, because their customers can make local calls that are directed to an IP Web Center agent over Verizon Business' IP network.

IP Web Center is already helping Rotech Healthcare, a nationwide leader in home medical equipment and services achieve business efficiencies. Rotech Healthcare is experiencing the complete benefits of Verizon Web Center by saving on premises equipment, maintenance and onsite repairs.

"By using Web Center to manage our inbound and outbound contact center requirements, we can stay focused on our goal of helping our clients to live a more comfortable and productive life," said Vanessa Hammer, director of network services, Rotech Healthcare. "The outbound capabilities and enhanced user interface combined with voice-over-IP support provide a complete contact center solution. With Verizon Business behind us, we are pleased to provide our patients with an even higher level of service."