Earlier in the month Google and Avaya announced what if succeeds will become the tipping point towards the WebRTC dominance in the contact center market.

Avaya explains that for years, the contact center was largely a static entity. Agents took calls at their desk, which were routed through expensive, physical hardware located onsite. Contact centers required significant investments in people, resources, hardware and software. Adding new agents took days, and opening up new contact centers took months.

In fact every day, hundreds of thousands of customer service agents get in their cars and drive to one of the estimated 66,000 contact centers in America.

To change this predicament, Avaya and Google developed a Chromebook application designed for flexible contact centers.

Avaya Agent for Chrome is a WebRTC-enabled interface that allows customer service agents to access Avaya’s contact center agent desktop through Chrome devices.

There’s no native software to download. Getting a new agent provisioned takes much less time. The application connects to Avaya systems securely–either on premise or in the cloud–meaning customer service agents don’t have to physically sit in the same building anymore, nor do they have to install applications on home computers when working remotely.

Avaya Agent for Chrome is currently available in three major configurations:

• For customer service agents working in a contact center, with an Avaya phone
• For customer service agents working remotely, using their own landline phone
• For customer service agents working remotely who want to take calls directly through their Chromebook

For example, an agent could take their Chromebook home, where they’d make Internet-enabled calls through the computer itself. If their Internet connection got slow, or otherwise unreliable, they could switch over to taking calls using their landline at home.

Because of WebRTC, being mobile doesn’t mean you give up important tools like call recording and analysis, performance metrics and automated alerts. It also replaces the need to install enterprise software on home computers or remotely troubleshoot VPN- or home computer problems on the fly.

In addition, Agents no longer will have to use their home computers. They will use a less costly Chromebook with Google’s Chrome Management Console which allows IT departments to remotely set rules on which apps employees can download onto the computer.

This way with Avaya Agent for Chrome, there’s no native application software to download, no VPN exposure, and IT security controls.