This is an important concept, and is where from a business perspective, ICM really adds value. It is also key to understanding that the implementation of ICM is much more than just technology.

ICM gives the capability to think of multiple physical call centres as a single logical entity. This means that it can be managed as a single entity, agents from multiple physical locations can be part of the same skill groups and all the routing logic is performed centrally. However the advantages specific to the different locations are maintained.

Now what does that mean in practice?

Let's look at some examples, chosen to be topical.

Two call centres, one in the UK, one in India integrated into an ICM solution. Two main skill groups, general customer enquiries and complaints. 90% of calls relate to enquiries (not a very successful company). Approximately 100 agents are in India and 30 in the UK, who also do other work. There is a central operational bridge in the UK.

Two skill groups are set up in ICM to represent customer enquiries and complaints. Customer enquiry calls are mainly handled in India for economic reasons, and complaints mainly in the UK, where staff have greater experience. Thus the routing is set up to reflect this, all enquiry calls are routed to India if agents are available, if not they are routed to the UK if agents are available, if no agents are available they are queued (in ICM) until an agent in India becomes available.  Complaints are routed to the UK if agents are available, if not, then to India, and if no agents are available at all, queued in ICM until a UK agent becomes available.

Now what has this achieved. Firstly the central bridge has a single overview of all contact centre activity, and can ask agents to log in or out dependent on demand signified by queue lengths, agent availability times, etc, thus dynamically managing supply and demand. In addition through the basic routing rules, general queries are passed to the most economic call centre with complaints going to the most experienced staff, however if there is a sudden surge in demand, the system will automatically manage the overflow to agents available in the right skill group in the other call centre. Equally, if opening hours are overlaid, complaint calls can be routed to India when the UK office is closed, either through routing or just through no UK agents being logged in. In addition, should an individual call centre fail, the calls would be automatically picked up by the other.

Now this is meant to be a simplistic example, and doesn't, for example, include full disaster recovery, however it demonstrates some of the benefits of ICM in call centre management when applied to the virtual call centre concept.

Note that by an agent being available we mean logged into ICM and signalling their status as available. ICM will then route calls when received to that agent dependent on the routing rules.