I am currently looking into various SOA and multi-channel offerings which are available from Microsoft. The Customer Care Framework (CCF) is another such offering which has many successful deployments in very high profile banks and telcos worldwide such as Bank of America, Bellsouth, El Pais, Telemar, Nawras.

CCF uses an SOA middle tier to wrap services provided by back-end systems and CRM access.

It can therefore leverages all the advantages of the SOA approach in facilitating collaboration between systems, abstraction of services that can be implemented by several systems, “progressive renovation” (abstract and shield so that you can change at a controlled pace).

As a result it has been used to demonstrate these advantages in circumstances such as post merger consolidation of systems such that the big bang and rip and replace paradigms need not apply. More on the SOA piece below…

CCF is very much a multi-channel customer care framework. Many different channels are supported for customer interactions and undoubtedly new ones can be added. Currently supported are:

· Telephone

· Speech Enables Voice Recognition

· Smart Phone

· Web Chat

· Email

· Self-Service Web Portal

Another key part to CCF is the functionality provided to the agent or Customer Service Representative (CSR). This is provided through the agent desktop, which provides an aggregation of CRM and Line of business applications within the enterprise.

The Agent Desktop

The agent desktop application provides a rich customer centric user interface to the Customer Service Representative (CSR) of the data gleaned from the various line-of-business applications (via WEB Services) or CRM systems in the back-end. The Agent Desktop provides integration with the telephone system using an abstraction layer that supports both the TAPI and TSAPI interfaces. This covers just about every telephone system. Support for additional APIs can also be added. CCF also integrates with Microsoft Speech Server for access to IVR applications.

The agent desktop is built using the Application Integration Framework. This provides a container for “hosting” user interfaces applications and can connect directly to the back-end system or use the middle tier which can offer data abstraction and caching.

The front end of CCF also offers Instant Messaging as a channel for CSRs to request backup on a particular issue. The CCF front end is built and deployed such that configuration data is held centrally which eases installation and support for roaming agents and roaming desktops. Customer context and state are also managed centrally such that a case can be efficiently transferred between agents and across channels. There is also a workflow capability within the agent desktop.

The Application Integration Framework can be used to integrate the following types of user facing applications: Web-based,TN3270, Java Swing Applications, ActiveX and legacy Windows Applications, .NET Framework (WinForm) Applications, Citrix Applications and other.

Server

On the server side of CCF is the Business Application Aggregation Module (BAAM) which leverages several technologies to do what the name suggests:

· Biztalk Server is used to aggregate across back-end mainframe and other applications to create XML Web Services entry-points to those systems.

· Enterprise Single Sign-On is also provided as a Biztalk Service. This includes support for RACF and various other authentication and authorization schemes.

· BAAM provides BAM (Business Activity Monitoring too thanks to the Biztalk Server BAM component. Regardless of the channel the customer has used to interact on the key metrics are monitored and managed centrally providing a consolidated view of key performance indicators.

The key point for me with CCF is that the degree to which the WEB Services Layer abstracts the business functionality is an implementation choice. Customers can use the Agent Desktop as a thin façade on existing business function by implementing a straight through approach to their WEB Services or choose to abstract, consolidate, standardize and re-use at the WEB Services layer.

With CCF there is no need to boil the ocean on day one. You can fill the kettle and serve the tea to your customers in the first week (week 2 for lakes and rivers, week 3 for the ocean).

Click here for more information on CCF