While many customers want to ensure their cloud contact center operates exactly as specified before they go live, very few customers, if any, will use the solution in complete isolation. They might use their inbound voice circuits or have an existing MPLS or VPN to transfer calls through. They’ll no doubt have third-party or in-house CRM systems and databases for lookups and data input. They might be using third-party TTS or NL engines to support their customer experience initiatives. And, no matter the configuration, any failures or issues across the entire contact center solution will determine whether they see the cloud migration as a success or failure.

Performing a simple, inexpensive load test before the system goes live can determine how these various elements are performing. This gives the customer a chance to identify and resolve any issues before they’re introduced to the production environment. It also presents the opportunity for you to highlight that the system you’ve created together operates as expected.

Intermittent issues, which only appear under load, can be nearly impossible to identify and fix in a production system. And they have a far more significant impact on the customers’ revenues and brand reputation. Blame is easily pushed between each vendor as they try to prove their solution isn’t at fault. During this time, the customer is still experiencing issues and key stakeholders only see that your organization isn’t performing.

What Could Go Wrong

In recent customer migrations to the Genesys CloudTM solution, an ETS load test performed prior to launch identified various issues, none of which were the result of the Genesys Cloud solution itself. If customers experienced these issues within a production environment, support tickets would have been raised through your organization, wasting time, resources and negatively affecting the overall impression of the solution you delivered.

The following issues were recently identified.

  • Carrier SIP trunk misconfiguration limited capacity to 50%.
  • Quality of Service configuration errors caused voice quality issues when call volumes hit over 60% capacity from the Cloud Contact Center as a Service edge.
  • Incorrect load balancing between customer SBCs caused intermittent call failures.
  • DNS lookup delays for API calls to customer database increased wait times.
  • Resource problems with backend server farms caused data lookups to fail under load and calls to error/disconnect.
  • External cloud TTS capacity limits under load caused error messages and calls to fail.

On average, the Occam ETS load services equate to less than 1% of the annual deal value. ETS load does the following:

  • Tests the entire network that supports the customer experience — from carrier to agent
  • Provides peace of mind that systems are operating to specification
  • Validates the stability of your cloud environment
  • Provides additional value by highlighting issues that are outside your initial responsibilities
  • Reduces pressure on your support desk
  • Enhances brand reputation by providing validation on your systems performance

Customers want more than just case studies and stats when they’re migrating their contact centers to the cloud. An ETS load test gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your confidence in your cloud operations — and quickly and effectively provide clarification as to the cause of an external issue that’s negatively affecting customer experience initiatives.

To learn more, visit the Occam listing in the Genesys AppFoundry Marketplace.

This blog post was co-authored by Gregg Lander. Gregg has over 15yrs of experience within the telecommunications industry and has a strong understanding of the e-commerce environment across both Europe and North America. Throughout his career, Gregg has served as an advisor to C-level executives of multinational brands across a broad spectrum of strategic issues. As part of his work at Occam, he continues to assist clients in improving both front and back-end customer-centric operational performance throughout their organization.