Unified Communication and Collaboration System

The Vendor is required to provide a unified communication and collaboration (UCC) solution to support division contact center queues.
- The UCC solution must support multiple phone queues, call recording, call log data collection, email integration, and an operator chat function.
- The system should allow for in-house administration, including configuration of call queues, addition of operators, and management of user access and permissions.
- The system should provide for the collection of call statistics and provide easily accessible and customizable reports on those statistics.
- Core Criteria:
•    Must be a UCC Solution that does not depend solely on the end user having a Microsoft Teams Voice calling plan in order to place outbound or receive inbound calls.
•    Must be a direct dial as opposed to utilizing session border controls for function and operation. Vendors may provide justification if their solutions uses a different method and believe it offers advantages.
•    Must be a fully developed and widely deployed solution that is not approaching end of life and is expected to remain supported for at least 3-5 years from the date of this RFI.
•    If the solution is fully SaaS, vendors must provide a guide or runbook on who is contacted in the event of an outage, degradation in quality, and expected response time for troubleshooting.
•    If the solution is fully SaaS, vendors must provide email alerts as to when services, upgrades, updates and patching may take place that could affect the performance of the solution. These updates must not occur during normal operating hours.
•    Must include a vendor training plan for administrators, agents, and managers that covers all role based functions. Training materials should include written documentation as well as recorded training sessions that can be used when onboarding staff.
•    Preference is for a cloud hosted (UCaaS) or Hybrid (UCaaS + On-premises) solution.
- Core Features:
•    The solution should provide a number of standardized reports around queue metrics, individual metrics, and provide a venue for creating customized reports either via PowerBI or a method available within the solution itself.
•    Queues and inbound call receiving should use a round-robin method but must also support skill based routing, allowing those with greater skills to receive inbound calls first.
•    Skills should be auditable and editable by users who are identified as managers. This must be separate from company administrators.
•    Queues should be easily managed by administrators to include emergency closures, holidays, and special hours where outbound calls are permitted while inbound calls go to voicemail.
•    Queues should allow a callback feature for callers who do not want to wait but don’t want to lose their place in the queue.
•    Queues should allow agents to place callers on hold and be able to call out to other agents or nonagents for assistance without hanging up on the original caller.
•    Queue “on hold” greetings should allow for a combination of music and voice-based notifications. Solution should allow text to voice capabilities, should incorporate their own cognitive speech capability or allow integration with Azure Cognitive Services. An available choice of speech styles should be available including male/female voice, accent, etc. if offering as part of the solution.
•    Call Center agents (software) must be fully supported under Microsoft Windows 11 Enterprise environments.
•    Call Center agents (software) must support standardized USB-A/USB-C headsets with boom mics. Common brands such as Jabra, Plantronics, and Logitech.