Callview Gateway is the heart of the Callview system.

The Gateway connects to your phone system, and watches each incoming, outgoing, and internal call. From this information, the Gateway can provide a detailed summary of your business telephone use.

With Callview Gateway comes Call Summary. This provides an instant and ever updating snapshot on the business performance of that day.

The Configurable Wallboard displays the precise information that you choose, using a full screen. It helps managers analyse performance, business requirements, and can be used to motivate staff.

The Gateway really comes into its own, however, when used with the Client module for screen popping or call control, or when used with one of the Wizard modules, such as Wizard ACD, for the real-time and historical reporting.

For several years now, call centres have been accustomed to ACD functionality, where callers are queued and evenly distributed between available agents, providing optimum efficiency of the available agents, and minimum wait times for customers. Yet what happens if a customer e-mails the call centre? Many businesses have no facility to provide ACD like functionality for other forms of contact.

They have several alternatives:

• All agents check the main mailbox (e.g. "sales@xyz.com") when they have a spare moment.
• The supervisor checks the main mailbox, and forwards messages to agents, regardless of whether the agent is currently able to deal with the message.
• Several agents only ever deal with e-mails, while the remainder only ever deal with calls.

Clearly these are not optimal situations. E-mails could queue for hours without being dealt with, while agents are tied up with calls. The important customer's order could lie unattended, while they look for alternative suppliers.

The solution to these problems is to bring ACD functionality to all media forms, not just calls. This is often known as "Media Blending", andhas been available since Callview version 3.1.

With Callview, calls, e-mails and other media are retrieved by Multi-Media Gateway. Rules configured in Callview Navigator then distribute the various media between available agents. When an agent is busy on a call, they are not routed messages, and vice versa. When the agent receives a routed call or e-mail, Callview Client can screen pop the contact, and the supervisor can continue to use Wizard and Wizard RT reporting tools to know who is doing what, and how long they have spent processing e-mails as opposed to calls.
With Callview Media Blending you can achieve the following:

• Route messages as you would route calls.
  Your top customers can be routed to your best sales staff, while bad debtors are routed to accounts - no matter how they may contact you!
  
  
• Send intelligent auto replies.
  Common questions received by e-mail can be answered without the need for an agent to see the question. This enables your agent to spend more time dealing with complex issues, leaving Callview to deal with the more routine requests.
  Additionally, you can auto reply to a customer's e-mail on arrival, and inform them how long you are currently taking to respond to e-mails and calls. The customer can then decide if their question requires a more immediate response.
  
  
  
• Bar all forms of media.
  Callview has been able to bar agents from making calls for a long time, but now with Media Blending it is able to bar other forms of media, both inbound and outbound. For example, you could stop agents from sending inappropriate responses to customers.
  Automate lost call callbacks.
  
  
• Navigator has previously been able to e-mail the supervisor when a call is lost, allowing the supervisor to allocate the callback to an agent for a reasonably quick callback. But with Media Blending, Navigator can route the lost call callback request straight to an available agent, resulting in an almost immediate callback.
  
  
• Keep your existing e-mail software.
  You have already invested in your current e-mail server and client software, and in training your agents to use the e-mail software. Many Media Blending solutions expect you to throw this investment away and use a proprietary e-mail client or server, forcing you to work the way that they want, and not the way that suits you. With Callview, we only ask that your e-mail server and client supports POP3 and SMTP, which most servers, including Microsoft Exchange, support. Callview works with your existing system, not against it