A pre-eminent financial services firm provides products for customers around the world. Dedicated to serving clients’ financial needs‚ the firm is committed to delivering the best customer experience possible. Its commitment doesn’t stop with clients‚ but extends to improving the lives of individuals in communities around the world.

A Business Challenge

The customer was interested in implementing a web services-based self-service platform to bring together web services and IP telephony in all of its contact centers worldwide. However‚ the company’s telecommunications systems and contact centers used a Linux server configuration that differed from the Linux platform certified for the proposed platform. With a minimum 10,000 busy hour call completions (BHCC) requirement, the company needed confirmation that the proposed platform could handle the volume generated in its speech recognition-enabled, web services environment.

Key Capabilities of the Solution

The customer and its solution provider turned to IQ Services to demonstrate the solution’s performance capabilities with real calls.

The team worked with IQ Services to sketch out a plan and performance testing objectives to simulate real-time calling patterns in a lab environment. The plan also provided opportunities to tune the overall implementation during testing‚ if required‚ to reach the production load conditions of 10,000 BHCC.

Seamless Transition to a New System

Working with the customer, IQ Services developed a remote testing plan to simulate production level traffic in the test environment. The test would use key components in a typical production system implementation – PSTN access‚ call control‚ interactive voice response (IVR)‚ speech recognition and web services – all controlled by the company’s proposed platform application. By gradually increasing traffic‚ the plan allowed the customer to observe the integrated solution performance under increasing traffic conditions‚ tuning component configurations as required to meet the test objectives.

Once testing began‚ IQ Services provided controlled call traffic into the solution and digitally recorded each telephone call end-to-end. The recordings allowed quick issue identification of issues‚ which were researched by a member of the technical support team and either resolved or logged for later follow-up. In addition, IQ Services provided real-time test results to the financial services firm online and via a test conference bridge‚ keeping the customer apprised of issues and allowing swift resolution of unsuccessful test events.

Ultimately, the solution required three rounds of performance testing. Insight gained during the first two rounds was used to iteratively tune the integrated solution and prepare for the third and final test. The last test verified that the uncertified Linux platform supported the proposed platform for production traffic of 10,000 BHCC, allowing the customer to move ahead with its worldwide deployment.

“By testing the end-to-end solution with IQ Services‚ we gained the confidence we needed to take our preferred solution to market‚” said the customer’s technical leader.“The testing confirmed that the integration was a success.”

Benefits for the Customer

The flexible‚ responsive test implementation and scheduling allowed the customer and its solution partner to establish and meet the unique test objectives by performing testing with little notice whenever needed. In addition‚ the company has received:

• IQ ServicesAssurance to implement the proposed platform solution worldwide
• IQ ServicesDocumented solution performance test results of a minimum 10‚000 BHCC
• IQ ServicesActionable data gathered from initial and secondary testing efforts‚ leading to faster issue resolution and reduced effort and cost
• IQ ServicesVerification that the proposed platform performed as desired on its preferred Linux platform

Thanks to IQ Services for the article.